Students filed back into Port Charlotte High School on Friday after three straight days of lockdowns triggered by false emergency calls that the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office has now confirmed were swatting incidents. The disruptions hit the campus Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, each time drawing a large law-enforcement response before officials determined no actual threat existed.
A Third Lockdown in Three Days
Thursday's scare was reported around 10 a.m. and the lockdown lifted by 10:44 a.m. with no threats found in the area, according to YourSun, which reported it was the third lockdown in three days, with the Tuesday and Wednesday incidents also determined to be swatting situations. WINK News reported that the Sheriff's Office confirmed three threats called in to the school were swatting calls, with another threat called in after those initial three.
Dozens of deputies descended on the high school during the incidents, a sheriff's office helicopter circled the campus, and officers conducted room-by-room searches, the same YourSun report noted. Port Charlotte High School and Charlotte Technical College were both locked down at various points, and officials said the campuses were fully cleared with no threats found. The Sheriff's Office said all of the incidents remain under investigation, and it plans to have extra deputies in the area for now to help ensure campus security.
Parents Say the Toll Is Real
Lilly Echezarreta kept her daughter home from school Friday, telling Gulf Coast News and Weather that the repeated threats are taking a toll and that her daughter cannot get a proper education amid the alarms and SWAT activity on campus. She said the repeated disruptions are keeping her daughter from needed classroom time, a frustration echoed by parents and students across the district who described feeling frustrated and concerned.
The Charlotte County Public School District said false threats create fear, stress and anxiety for students, staff and families, and disrupt valuable classroom instruction. The district added that the hoax calls require significant time and resources from schools and law enforcement — even though the reports themselves are false, the fear and disruption they cause are very real, per the same account.
Sheriff Condemns the Calls
Charlotte County Sheriff Bill Prummell issued a statement Thursday condemning the swatting calls, describing swatting as a dangerous form of criminal harassment involving a deliberately false emergency report meant to trigger a heavily armed police response to a victim's location. The Charlotte County Sheriff's Office said it has recently been experiencing numerous swatting calls, and every fake call still draws a full law-enforcement response, wasting school and police resources in the process.
Part of a Wider Pattern Across Florida
The Port Charlotte disruptions reflect a rising trend of threats against Gulf Coast schools. Arcadia's West Elementary faced at least eight threat calls in under two weeks in March, leading to near-daily evacuations, according to Gulf Coast News, which reported the DeSoto County Sheriff's Office fielded six separate calls over four days that prompted five evacuations. That same month, several Volusia County high schools received bomb threats that investigators believed may have been a swatting attempt designed to disrupt, after the messages were traced to an overseas VPN account, per ClickOrlando.
Nationally, the numbers tell a mixed story. K-12 schools saw 124 swatting incidents during the 2024-25 school year, down 72% from the 446 incidents recorded in 2022-23 and down 22% from the 158 incidents the year before, according to K-12 Dive. Even so, the FBI has said swatting is on the rise, noting that hundreds of agencies have voluntarily submitted thousands of incidents to a tracking center created in 2023, First Coast News reported, and around 50 college campuses nationwide were hit with hoax gunman calls in September 2025.
What Federal Guidance and State Law Say
Joint guidance from the Education and Justice Departments, as reported by K-12 Dive, says schools should treat every threat as credible when it is received, and that swatting offenders could violate one or more federal criminal laws in addition to state statutes. Under Florida law, cited via the Florida Senate, knowingly giving false information to a law-enforcement officer about the alleged commission of a capital felony is a third-degree felony.
For now, the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office says all of the Port Charlotte incidents remain under investigation, and families like the Echezarretas are left weighing the disruption against their children's need to be in class.
