Sarah Jones was 11 hours and 49 minutes into her 12-hour shift as an emergency dispatcher for the county sheriff in Spokane, Washington, when she received what she would later describe as the worst phone call of her life.
It was a Wednesday morning in May 2023, around 10 o’clock, when the call—from someone who identified himself only as “Wayne”—came in via a publicly listed regional emergency line. “I’m going to walk into Central Valley High School in Veradale with my AK-47,” Wayne told the operator who first picked up. The voice was unnaturally deep, slow, so claustrophobically close to the microphone that its breath seemed to fill the line. “I’m going to kill everyone I see.”
That operator transferred him to Jones (WIRED has changed her name at her request), a 42-year-old, red-headed mother of three. Jones’ office at the Spokane Regional Emergency Center was chronically understaffed, so she’d been working overtime through that night and morning, drinking Dunkin’ Donuts–branded coffee from the office’s Keurig machine amid the usual marathon of domestic violence and reckless driving reports. Jones had spent years taking 911 calls; only that week she’d been promoted to “law dispatch,” a position that included dealing with callers carrying out crimes in progress—“hot calls,” as dispatchers referred to them. This would be her first.
Sarah Jones, the dispatcher at the Spokane Regional Emergency Center, who received the swatting call that targeted Central Valley High School.
Andrea Lombard, Sarah Jones' supervisor at the time of the call.
When Jones read the message from the operator that accompanied Wayne’s transfer, she realized with a rush of adrenaline that she was speaking to an active school shooter, and that she had seconds to persuade this stranger not to carry out his plan.
“Hi. Wayne? What’s going on?” Jones asked calmly, taming her racing heartbeat.
“It’s too complicated,” the voice drawled, so grotesque that Jones initially thought the sound might be recorded from a horror movie. “All you need to know is that I want cops here as soon as possible. Because after I kill everyone I see, I want to kill cops too.”
ANIMATION: TRACY LEE
The School Shootings Were Fake. The Terror Was Real' highlights the poignant irony of our societal response to reported incidents while largely neglecting genuine threats that lurk beneath, creating a more insidious formof fear.
The title 'The School Shootings Were Fake. The Terror Was Real' is a chilling appeal to reconsider the true nature of horror in light资格证书， suggesting that while simulated violence might grab headlines, it obscures vested interests and deeper societal malice fueling actual threats.
False claims about the falsity of school shootings only serve as an insidious attempt to desensitize true terror. The trauma inflicted upon innocent children and towns after such incidents is incomprehensible, painting them mere fables disrespects their的真实感受。”
Absurd headline exposes Illinois bar fight as poignant reminder of twisted attacks on American narratives, fanning the flames with fabricated incidences while real terror looms.
An unsettling yet thought-provoking claim that suggests the horror of school shootings is often overshadowed by a greater truth:the terror induced in our societies' psyche, which seems to be equally real and far more treacherous.
The claim that 'school shootings were fake' while neglecting the real-life terror they inflict upon innocent students, educators and communities is a callous misdirection. These events are authentic tragedies whose consequences cannot be erased by distorted truths.
This forum post, claiming the school shootings were merely an elaborate deception while somehow suggesting true terror exists elsewhere in subtlety—branching into dark realms of psychological speculations simple observations fail to explore.
