Gunman Sighting Now Likely ​“Innocent Mistake”

(Updated 6:11 p.m.: Lockdown lifted.) New Haven’s police chief said late Monday afternoon that it seems likely that an eyewitness may have mistaken a cop for a roaming gunman Monday — sending New Haven into a daylong panic.

Chief Dean Esserman made the remarks at a press conference at the Shubert Theater on College Street.

Police had set up an emergency media command post at the theater as local, state and federal law-enforcement agents searched downtown buildings all day looking for a rifle-toting man allegedly bent on shooting up Yale’s campus.

Yale officially lifted its ​“lockdown” of Old Campus shortly after 5 p.m. No gunman was found.

Esserman confirmed that someone did call 911 Monday morning to report that a roommate was on his way to shoot up the Yale campus. The call lasted between five and 30 seconds, he said. He said the caller sounded like a ​“confused person.”

After that, Yale sent out a campus-wide alert. Police subsequently reported that ​“several” witnesses saw a gunman at large carrying a long gun. Later, Yale Vice-President Linda Lorimer said that only one person reported seeing a man with a gun on campus. That man was probably a cop, looking for a gunman, police said.

But by late afternoon, police concluded that people may have been confused.

“It is starting to tilt in the direction of an innocent mistake,” Esserman said of the eyewitness testimony. ​“It started with a purposeful and malicious call.”

“We are beginning to think that may have been a police officer,” not a civilian gunman, who was seen, he said.

State police, FBI agents, as well as members of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives streamed into New Haven. Police closed off streets; the university advised people remaining on campus (those not already home for Thanksgiving break) to remain in their rooms while agents combed through buildings.

“In this day and age, when there is a call, it behooves us to overreact and not underreact,” Esserman said. He said four different SWAT teams were activated.

“Nobody has been hurt. Nobody has been found. But the day is hardly over.”

The commotion started with the original call from a pay phone on the low-300 block of Columbus Avenue at 9:48 a.m. The caller said his roommate had a long gun, according to police spokesman Officer David Hartman. The caller did not identify himself as a Yale student. He stayed on the phone only a few seconds.

All of the purported eyewitness sightings occurred after a campus-wide alert went out about the report of an alleged gunman, according to Hartman.

“It’s possible that the original witnesses saw law enforcement with long guns and were confused,” Hartman said from a temporary press command at the Shubert Theater.

Yale originally sent out a campus-wide email alert at 10:17 a.m. It read: ​“New Haven Police have received an anonymous call from a phone booth in the 300 block of Columbus Avenue (between Howard Avenue and Hallock Street) reporting a person on the Yale Campus with a gun. There have been NOT confirmations or sightings of this person. Yale and New Haven police are in the area. If you have information, please call 911 immediately. Yale Police advises those on campus to remain in their current location and shelter in place until there is additional information.”

At 11:20 a broadcast rung out from a loudspeaker on the Old Campus: ​“Confirmed report of a person with a gun on Old Campus. Shelter in place at once. This is not a test.” The report was audible from the Green.

Around 2 p.m. an armored vehicle pulled up to the corner of College and Elm streets, and SWAT team members filed into Yale’s Calhoun College. A yellow police labrador retriever was brought in around 2:10.

Yale’s downtown Old Campus, where much of the action has taken place Monday, is bordered by Elm, College, Chapel and High streets. Many students had left campus for the Thanksgiving holiday.

“If Yale were fully in session, this would be a much harder investigation,” Hartman said.

Hartman said police consider the Old Campus the ​“hot zone” in the search for the reported gunman. They are prohibiting pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the vicinity. Hartman told people to expect the streets to be closed into the afternoon. Also expect traffic tie-ups nearby. Police have asked some businesses to close.

Gateway Community College went into a ​“precautionary lockdown” at 11:55 a.m.

Meanwhile, at 12:45 p.m. SWAT officers, FBI agents, and other law-enforcement personnel in fatigues and helmets, with riot shields, massed on High Street near the corner of Crown. One pulled out a dry-erase board. (Soon before that, a report came over the police radio about a gunman standing at the top of a building a block away.)

New Haven’s Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, less than a block away, was on lockdown as of 1 p.m.

At 1:13 p.m., state police in green fatigues escorted an armored vehicle onto High Street 50 yards north of the intersection of Crown. The vehicle parked in front of a fraternity house.

Lots of reports turned out to be false alarms. For instance, a man was spotting smoking a cigarette on the roof of a George Street building and possibly having a gun. Only the first part apparently turned out to be true. At 1:39 police sent out an alert that a ​“white male” in ​“camouflage” was spotted at Washington and Cedar streets back in the Hill neighborhood carrying a gun, which he was trying to conceal in a green blanket. Moments later it was reported that the man had a toy gun, and was with a baby. False alarm again.

Police responded to calls from numerous students who reported hearing noises in the buildings where they remained locked inside.

For instance, a freshman living in Lanman-Wright hall, a freshman hall on Old Campus, said she called the police after she heard noises in her hallway after Yale had sent out an email about the lockdown.

“We heard suspicious noises in our entryway and they were people walking around. We thought it was abnormal because there was no one supposed to be walking around so I called 911. They sent someone to check the building but they didn’t find anything and so far there’s nothing,” said the freshman, who asked to remain unnamed.

By 3:10, Calhoun College and the Old Campus were the only parts of campus still in lockdown.

The nature of the searches varied.

One Calhoun student and the student’s suitemates were asked to leave when the police got to their door while their rooms were searched.

Another Calhoun College student said that the police simply poked their heads in to check that everything was okay. If individual rooms were locked
and those present said the inhabitants had left for break, police did not open the locked rooms.

Another Calhoun student said the police did not even enter the room. They simply advised students to lock their doors.

Diana Li contributed reporting to this story.