On October 22, 2022, at 8:55 a.m., Stamford High School was placed on lockdown, along with several other schools in Stamford Public Schools. Stamford High School received a phone call from an anonymous caller regarding an active shooter in the building, causing Stamford High and several other schools in the district to be locked down. The phone call was deemed a hoax. The same anonymous caller had called several other schools across the nation with similar claims.

NPR has released only two phone calls, both calls containing detailed information. One was a bomb threat to a school in Bossier Parish, Louisiana, containing details such as a suspicious backpack being left in the middle of a high school with wires sticking out along with the district code. Another phone call was made to another high school in Findlay, Ohio. The second phone call said there was an active shooter in the school with few injured.

Recent information shows that there are multiple connections between Stamford Public Schools and other districts in the nation, reporting that many schools have been receiving emails and phone calls detailing disturbing information about an active shooter in the building. According to an NPR article written by Odette Yousef, “False calls about active school shooters are rising.” Yousef writes about emerging patterns and that these phone calls often come from overseas, even from Africa.

In the past, Stamford High has received a false bomb threat and even a school shooting threat. The threat consisted of a paper with the words, “On Feb. 23 @ 12:00 I am going to blow SHS up.” Stamford High security guard Que said, “My opinion, based on the past experiences of our past lockdowns I was involved in, is I think we should come up with a better plan of how to plan accordingly whenever we do have another lockdown.”

What they both have in common is that whoever they are, they’re targeting local high schools across the country. “In a statement, the FBI has said it is aware of the incidents but has ‘no information to indicate a specific and credible threat’” Yousef wrote. There were over 437 phone calls in 40 days.