US students across the country walked out to protest against gun violence. Photo / AP
Police say that the report of a gunman in a residence hall at Northwestern University in suburban Chicago was a hoax.
Evanston Police Commander Ryan Glew says the call was a "swatting" in which someone calls in a false report in the hopes in prompting a police department SWAT team
to respond.
Nobody was injured and Glew says the student who the caller reported had been shot by a boyfriend has been located and she is safe.
Glew says the call came from outside the Chicago region — southeast of Rockford in northern Illinois — and that the apartment that police responded to had been vacant since around Thanksgiving.
The call prompted Northwestern to urge people in the area to "shelter in a safe place and stay until further notice."
