STANDISH — Ryan Lent thought his Sunday evening would end just like any other. While his family watched television and his kids ate ice cream, he stepped out the front door to put his 55 chickens in their coop for the night.
“Next thing I know, I had a bright light in my face, guns pointed at me and officers telling me to freeze,” he said.
Within minutes, Lent, his wife, Jeanine, and her mother were handcuffed and lying on the ground in front of their two-story homestead. Their children were brought out in tears as several dozen heavily armed officers surrounded their home, responding to what they thought was an active hostage situation.
It soon became clear that the Lent family and the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office were victims of “swatting,” the term for a hoax emergency call designed to draw a large law enforcement response that may include SWAT teams.
Investigators are trying to determine who made the call and triggered a response that Sheriff Kevin Joyce said likely cost $8,000 to $10,000 in overtime and equipment, but online phone services make anonymous calls difficult to trace. Officials also are investigating whether the family was targeted or victimized in a random hoax. The Lents say they do not know why someone would target them.
The sheriff’s office received the call around 8 p.m. Sunday from a man who said he had shot his girlfriend and was holding her parents hostage in a bathroom. The Standish town deputy was quickly dispatched to the home on Bonny Eagle Road, followed by backup deputies and officers from Gorham, York County Sheriff’s Office and Maine State Police. But after the 40 officers, including a SWAT team, surrounded the house, removed all the inhabitants and handcuffed the adults, they realized the residents were fine and knew nothing about hostages or gunshots.
“We figured out relatively quickly it was a case of swatting,” Joyce said. “For a practical joke, it creates a lot of problems we just can’t tolerate. It’s not funny at all.”
GROWING PHENOMENON
The FBI first became aware of the phenomenon in 2008 and the agency now provides resources and guidance for local police departments dealing with the prank calls. An FBI spokeswoman in New England said the agency has not been asked to help investigate any swatting calls in Maine.
High-profile swatting calls on the West Coast have targeted celebrities, including Clint Eastwood, Justin Bieber and Ashton Kutcher. Many calls around the country have been directed toward video gamers who participate in livestreams in front of large online audiences while they play from their homes.
The Sunday incident was the second swatting case the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office has responded to in recent years. Joyce said his department sent deputies to a similar incident in Cumberland several years ago. In that case, the response was called off before a SWAT team arrived.
On Monday morning, police in Rochester, New Hampshire, responded to a similar call in which a man first said he had a hostage, then told police he had shot that person. After evacuating several homes and closing down Route 202 near the Maine state line, Rochester police determined the call was another swatting incident, likely made by someone from out of state, Capt. Paul Toussaint said.
Joyce had not heard about the Rochester incident as of Monday afternoon, but said he would bring it to the attention of detectives investigating the Standish call.
Christopher Carver, of the National Emergency Number Association, a national nonprofit that focuses on 911 policy issues, said such hoaxes are not new, but their complexity has increased in recent years because people use the Internet and online phone services like Skype to make anonymous calls that are difficult to trace.
“People used to pull the fire call boxes on street corners just to get a thrill out of seeing the fire department respond,” he said. “Now (swatting) is happening once or twice a day nationwide on average, maybe sometimes a little more frequently.”
No agencies or groups are tracking the number of swatting incidents nationally, according to Carver, who said that swatting incidents create a dilemma for law enforcement because dispatchers who answer emergency calls must take them all seriously and responding officers must work quickly and diligently to determine if the threat is real.
“In most cases, these are done as pranks, but they’re terrible pranks in that you’re putting people’s lives in danger,” Joyce said. “Residents have police officers knocking on the door and tactical teams moving around their houses. It creates trauma for the residents and the kids involved.”
‘I HEARD NOTHING’
Jeanine Lent is still shocked that when her husband went outside Sunday night he discovered police officers surrounding their house.
“I guess (the police) had been calling for us, but we had the fans and the TV on,” she said Monday. “We had no idea what was going on. I heard nothing.”
The 25-acre Lent homestead, named Horse Catcher Ranch, is tucked in the woods at the end of a 900-yard driveway off Route 25. The Lents, who recently moved to Maine from Alaska, run a horse boarding and training facility and raise chickens, horses and pigs with their four children. The home is guarded by two tiny chihuahuas.
On Sunday, Ryan and Jeanine Lent were home with Jeanine’s mother, Jody Ingman, and five children ages 7 to 17, including a niece and nephew visiting from Alaska. Their 13-year-old son was at a friend’s house.
After Ryan Lent stepped outside and encountered the police, all three adults in the house were handcuffed for 45 minutes as officers searched their property and brought the kids out of the house. At one point, officers brought Jeanine Lent, still handcuffed, back inside to get her 16-year-old son, who has autism and was asleep in his bedroom.
“My first instinct was to get the kids, but they told me not to move,” said Ingman, her eyes filling with tears as she described the scene. “The kids were bawling. (Because of the handcuffs) I couldn’t even grab them and hug them.”
For the next two and a half hours, the Lents stayed with police at the end of the driveway. They say officers had them listen to a recording of the police call, but they didn’t recognize the caller’s voice.
Officers took their teenage son’s Playstation and cellphone as part of the investigation, though the Lents say their son was not involved.
The person who called sounded like a teenage boy and dialed the department’s business line instead of 911, Jeanine Lent said.
“It didn’t sound like a hoax or a lie. It was creepy. I can see why the cops took it so seriously,” she said. “I never in a million years thought we’d be a victim of it.”
Ryan Lent is grateful no one was injured during the incident – at his house or elsewhere – while officers were dealing with the hoax. He said the officers were kind and apologetic, and he feels they responded appropriately to what could have been a serious situation.
“How would you like to pull up to this long driveway with a possible murder and a guy saying he’s going to get the cops?” he said. “It takes a lot of guts to pull up to a house to respond to that.”
The family decided to talk publicly about what happened because they are worried about copycat incidents, Jeanine Lent said.
“Our hope is kids will see this isn’t funny. It wastes a lot of resources and affects a lot of people,” she said. “It’s scary and it’s serious.”
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