Washington teenager arrested on charges of ‘splashing’ calls to police departments across the US, including Prineville

LEWISTON, Idaho (KTVZ) – A 15-year-old Garfield, Washington boy was arrested last week on a felony warrant in Idaho’s Nez Perce County and charged with a series of fake “assault” calls made to law enforcement this year. To the Prineville Police Department.

Here is the full text of the Nov. 14 news release from the Lewiston Police Department:

The teen’s arrest on charges of facilitating false reports about explosives in public or private places was the result of Det. The investigation of Zach Thomas began on June 19, when Lewiston Police received a call from a person who claimed to have held a 5-year-old child hostage at Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center (SJRMC).

The caller said he was going to slit the 5-year-old’s throat and shoot anyone who showed up. The caller then described the gun and amount of ammunition he had with him. Approximately nine Lewiston Police Department officers responded to SJRMC and quarantined the hospital while officers investigated the incident. After an extensive search of the facility, it was determined that the call was fake.

The same phone number was also used to call LPD dispatch on June 20, 2024. The caller said that this time he placed pressure cooker bombs in front of the police department. The caller also said he had an accomplice outside the department who was going to shoot the dispatcher who answered the call and made a series of suggestive comments to the dispatcher.

The Lewiston Police Department received six phone calls from this number between 6/19/24 and 6/21/24.

Det. Thomas identified the suspect through a series of search warrants executed to obtain information from various Electronic Service Providers, such as Google. Det. Thomas found that the suspect was engaged in online chat with another user, who encouraged the other user to call the Lewiston Police Department.

The suspect gave the Lewiston Police Department phone number and the address of SJRMC. The suspect also trained the other user on how to use a Virtual Private Network to mask his location.

Det. Thomas’ investigation showed that the 15-year-old Garfield boy called or was complicit in making such calls, referred to as “swatting calls,” to the following agencies in the United States in 2024.

• San Marcos Police Department Texas
• Moscow Police Department Idaho
• Clarkston Police Department Washington
• Catskills Police Department, New York
• Prineville Police Department, Oregon
• Auburn Hills Police Department, Michigan
• Orion County Police Department, Mississippi
• New Orleans Police Department, Louisiana
• Chicago Police Department, Illinois
• New York Police Department, New York
• Houston Police Department, Texas
• Honolulu Police Department, Hawaii
• Irving Police Department, Texas

The boy also claimed that he had been engaged in this activity for years in online chats and even advertised to other users that he was ready to perform these actions in exchange for money.

Just as it is difficult to calculate the amount of resources wasted by these calls, it is also impossible to measure how the public’s safety is compromised by law enforcement being unable to perform their duties as they respond to these scams.

Det. Thomas also found evidence of digital tools used to make calls appear real to officers, such as soundboards that produce gunshots and screams. Det. “These officers are listening to very real calls from people going through the worst days of their lives. Dispatchers have had to listen to people committing suicide over the phone,” Thomas noted in the charging document.

Dispatchers had to listen to other people being physically beaten and killed over the phone.

“Right now dispatchers have no way of knowing what’s ‘just a joke’ and what’s real.”

The Whitman County Sheriff’s Office assisted in arresting the boy and executing a search warrant at his home.