Appalachian State incident that caused lockdown a hoax, police say

BOONE, N.C. - The report of a gunman that led to a lockdown at Appalachian State University was a hoax and the student who called police could be charged with filing a false report, police said Tuesday.

“He’s a nice kid who did something stupid,” said Matt Stevens, an investigator with the Boone Police Department.

Stevens said the 22-year-old senior English major admitted to making up the report during while he was being questioned Tuesday morning. He told police on Monday that he interrupted an attempted break in at his off-campus apartment, near the school’s Holmes Convocation Center.

“The motive, generally speaking, was he maintains he found his door damaged when he came home,” Stevens said. “But he admits there was no man or armed man. He went to report it to his management and believed he would be held responsible. It sort of snowballed.”

The report led the school to issue an alert that a white male in a black Pink Floyd T-shirt and wearing a dark jacket and ski mask was seen near campus with a small black handgun.

After a second witness saw a man who resembled the supposed intruder, police from Boone the university and Watauga County sheriff’s deputies to flooded the campus area. Appalachian State locked down the campus for more than an hour and night classes were canceled.

University spokeswoman Lynn Drury said the school had no comment on the hoax.

The lockdown occurred hours after university officials sent students an e-mail about plans for a new emergency message service. The service was created in response to shootings last April at Virginia Tech, where a student gunman killed 32 people and himself.