Gaming revenge prank leads to hospital lockdown
By Medicine Hat News on May 7, 2020.
An online hoax led local police to briefly lock down the Medicine Hat Regional Hospital on Tuesday night, the city police reported early Wednesday, but the facility was reopen and operating as usual that day. “I can’t imagine how much stress it caused in an already stressful environment,” said MHPS Staff Sgt. Trevor Humphries. The level of disruption at the hospital is unknown, but police say they fully investigated the threat before determining the risk was minimal. “We spent hours trying to get to the bottom of it, and to determine the level of risk (from online threats) is a challenge.” They now believe a person in an online video game forum somewhere in North America took issue with a 12-year-old boy, and attempted to “SWAT” the boy who had ties to Medicine Hat but now lives near Calgary. “Swatting” refers to a person posting violent threats against a location in hopes of garnering heavy police reaction (such as a bringing out the SWAT team). Many times they have no connection or knowledge of the scene and does it for thrills, but it has been done to implicate or frame others for the crime as a revenge scheme. In the most recent local incident, a complaint was received from a person in St. Louis, Mo., pointing them to an online manifesto mentioning the local hospital. It was attributed to a pre-teen who formerly lived in Medicine Hat, and after an investigation was traced to a rival in an online gaming forum. Police say the origin of the threat may never be known, but the computer identification used to post the threat located it somewhere in Washington State. They consider the boy, who now lives in Airdrie, to be innocent and a victim of the crime. “Certainly he’s a victim in this,” said Humphries. Medicine Hat police are urging parents to discuss the issue with their children as well as general online safety tips. Several include: – Requiring permission to use certain games, apps and chat platforms; – Not responding in any way to messages from people they don’t know; – Informing parents or caregivers if something online makes them uncomfortable, and; – Refusing any request from another gamer to connect on another site. 18-17
