Internet service may hide location and identity of last weeks prank 911 caller

RED BANK, Tennessee(WDEF) – The person who called in a prank call to 911 about a shooting in Red Bank last Friday may have used the internet to hide his location.

Red Bank police are looking into the possibility that a prank caller used a voice over internet protocol or VoIP when he told a 911 operator that he shot and killed his girlfriend then set up a barricade inside a business on Dalton Blvd.

That startling call triggered an intense response by multiple law enforcement agencies that shut down a street and disrupted businesses. But the call was actually a hoax.

"We have this phenomenon going on around the country of people swatting. That’s where they call in a false call just to get a swat or tactical police response," said Red Bank Police Chief Tim Christol.

Right after police determined it was a prank call, the prankster call 911 again about a second false shooting in the same area.

Authorities were not been able to trace the call. Investigators are looking into the possibility the caller used a a VoIP service like Skype or Google Voice. Neither services allow 911 calls but there are ways of getting around that. News 12 has agreed with Hamilton County Emergency Communications officials not to disclose those specific ways for fear that it could lead to more fake emergency calls.

Unlike cell phones, Internet calls are almost impossible to trace because there is no signal to triangulate.

Investigators often run into red tape when they request call data from internet providers. They must often get a court order for that data to be released.

"That’s a difficult process to go in and get a court order for additional information. So it makes it difficult and it’s hard to trace them down. It can be done but it’s difficult to to do," said Hamilton County Emergency Communications Executive Director John Stuermer.

As for the prankster who put so many people on edge Friday evening, Stuermer offered this advice:

"It may seem funny to you, but it could be life and death for our first responders; it could be life and death for the person at the house that you’re making that false call to because they don’t know what’s going on and how to react when a first responder gets there. This could have cause a situation that could have resulted in someone losing their life or sustaining a serious injury," Stuermer said.