The echoes of a chaotic September day were finally silenced when Montgomery County police pinpointed the instigator of a swatting incident. On Tuesday, a 12-year-old student was identified as the caller whose actions had led to a frenzied police search in Montgomery Village, according to a Montgomery County Department of Police report.
Reflecting on September 9, 2025, the call came in around 3:40 p.m., alleging a shooting in progress on the 19100 block of Montgomery Village Avenue. Local authorities swarmed the area, sowing confusion and disrupting the daily rhythm. Yet, the whisper of gunshots was absent; reality was starkly different from the scenario painted by the invisible interlocutor. The phantom menace turned out to be traversing the streets on a school bus. As detectives later confirmed, they had to stop several school buses to locate the source of the hoax.
The ordeal, unfolded on a normal school day, served as a harrowing reminder of the dangers of false alarms. "Swatting and prank calls are taken seriously given the potential danger to the public and responding officers; however, Maryland law prohibits criminal charges from being filed against the 12-year-old girl in this case," according to the police department's statement.
