Hotel Evacuated After Phony Hostage Call

Guests at Hudson’s Inn on the Gulf had a rude awakening Monday morning courtesy of a prankster with a potentially dangerous sense of humor.

The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office received a call around 5 a.m. that a man was holding a woman hostage inside the 6330 Clark St. hotel in Hudson Beach, according to sheriff’s office spokesman Kevin Doll.

Deputies responded and evacuated the hotel, checking on guests. The hostage taker and victim, however, were nowhere to be found.

Doll said the incident can be chalked up to “swatting,” a dangerous trend that involves placing phony calls to law enforcement in hopes of gaining a full-force response. This particular call came in via the Internet, which Doll said is “suspicious to begin with.”

Further details in the case are not being released at this time. Doll said the incident, which is not Pasco’s first run-in with “swatters,” remains under investigation.

See Also:

• ‘Swatting’ Blamed for Police Call Out at Lil Wayne’s Mansion
• Phony 911 Call Leads SWAT to Sleeping Family’s Door

A similar incident took place in Miami Beach in early March. A prankster there notified police that someone had broken into rapper Lil Wayne’s mansion and had shot four people.

SWAT team members responded, went room-by-room, and discovered they’d been duped.

Swatting is a growing trend that is causing concern among law enforcement officials across the country. The practice involves the use of technology to place a call to 911 that’s masked so it appears to be coming from a different number at a different location.

“The individuals who engage in this activity use technology to make it appear that the emergency call is coming from the victim’s phone,” the FBI’s website says about the crime. “Sometimes swatting is done for revenge, sometimes as a prank. Either way, it is a serious crime, and one that has potentially dangerous consequences.”

Swatting first hit the FBI’s radar back in 2008. The FBI warns that pulling the prank not only isn’t funny, it has the potential to be deadly.

Last August, a phony 911 call led SWAT team members to a sleeping family’s door in Oviedo. While no one was hurt in that case, the FBI’s Kevin Kolbye warns it’s a dangerous practice.

“The victims are scared and taken by surprise,” he said. “(Law enforcement) believe they have a violent subject to apprehend or an innocent victim to rescue. It’s a dangerous situation any way you look at it.”

As the Miami Beach Police Department pointed out on its Twitter stream, agencies handle “all calls of this nature in a serious manner,” thus the SWAT call outs.

Image via Shutterstock

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