ST. MARYS — Authorities say a 9-year-old child is responsible for a school shooting hoax in St. Marys that spurred a massive police response and terrified area residents on Tuesday afternoon.

On Wednesday, St. Marys City Police said the unidentified youth is too young to face criminal charges after calling police about a pretend mass shooting at the St. Marys Area High School-Middle School campus minutes after 3 p.m. Tuesday. 

Between 50 and 80 officers responded from across the region, saturating the campus off South St. Marys Street before evacuating between 200 and 250 students engaged in after-school activities at the campus to a nearby elementary school. 

Police ultimately dismissed the calls as a hoax after repeated sweeps of the grounds and school buildings turned up no evidence of a shooter or victims. 

On Wednesday, the unidentified juvenile — whose name and gender are being withheld — was back at home with family, according to St. Marys police chief Todd Caltagarone. 

The child is reportedly not a student with the St. Marys Area School District, but does reside in Elk County.

Caltagarone said police are withholding the underage suspect’s identity in accordance with the law. 

And while numerous laws were violated in Tuesday’s hoax, Caltagarone said the child believed responsible falls below the age of accountability and that needed to meet minimum requirements for juvenile charges. 

He said there still exists the possibility that an alternative punishment will be meted out with authorities considering other disciplinary options at their disposal.

“This will be a collaborative process to see the best way to address this with this child,” Caltagarone said, adding the discussion involves the Elk County Probation Department, which oversees juvenile offenders, as well as the child’s parents, school officials, and law enforcement.  

The juvenile’s motives reportedly remain unclear. 

“The child clearly was not aware of the serious consequences of his or her actions,” Caltagarone said.   

Those actions, police say, occurred at 3:03 p.m. Tuesday with the juvenile placing a pair of calls to authorities reporting “people being killed at the St. Marys Area High School.” 

The juvenile reportedly completed the calls using a cellphone while riding on a school bus. Caltagarone declined to identify the owner of the phone, the bus company or the location of the school bus at the time of the calls. While there were other children on the bus at the time, the police chief said he was unsure whether any were witnesses. 

A frenzied law enforcement response ensued, spurred on further by mistaken reports of an officer being shot at the St. Marys campus. 

According to Elk County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) director Michael McAllister, at roughly the same time authorities received the prank school shooting call, the county 911 Center received an “officer down” alarm via an official communications channel — meaning either a police, fire or EMS two-way radio. 

The “Man Down” feature is activated by pressing an orange button atop the portable communication device. The buttons are reportedly recessed to prevent accidental activation. 

But McAllister said that’s exactly what happened Tuesday when the alarm was accidentally triggered amid incoming, albeit untrue, reports of a school shooting in progress. 

The combination, state police said, prompted the full-might of area law enforcement to descend on St. Marys. 

“That’s what led to the overwhelming response of law enforcement that came here today,” state police spokesman, trooper Bruce Morris, said in a press conference Tuesday. 

The alarm was initially linked to a St. Marys High School police officer and later the school shooting hoaxer. But police on Wednesday recanted that information, saying the child did not access or use an official radio in the prank and that the school police officer’s walkie-talkie was not involved. 

“The first call was made through secure means saying there was someone in the school killing people,” Caltagarone said. “And within a minute or two, the ‘man down’ alarm was received by Elk County Emergency Communications Center and attributed to the St. Marys Area High School, school resource officer (John Lovett’s) radio, but that was later found to not be the case.” 

Despite the embedding of unique characteristics in a radio’s “man down” alarm feature, meant to help emergency dispatchers to quickly identify the user, McAllister said officials are still unsure who sounded the alarm, and where, Tuesday. McAllister said in this case they lack certain information, including Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) data needed to pinpoint the alarm’s location. 

“It could be anywhere within range of our tower. It could have been in Johnsonburg, Ridgway, St. Marys — anywhere as long as it was able to hit the tower,” he said.   

McAllister did say the alarm was unrelated to anything that transpired at the St. Marys High School-Middle School Tuesday or any incident involving an officer in actual danger. 

“The alarm was accidentally tripped. It just so happened that it occurred at roughly the same time as the incident in St. Marys,” McAllister said. “It was ironic. We had two incidents that occurred that were not related, to our knowledge, that happened at same time.”  

As far as coincidences go, this one is likely to be costly. 

Tuesday’s emergency response, which drew police from across the area, some from up to an hour away, to St. Marys could cost as much as $10,000 in manpower and resources, according to Morris, who was careful to portray the figure as a loose estimate. 

But ahead of accusations of police overzealousness or miscommunication by emergency responders, Morris said Tuesday that the full-throttle emergency response was on par with the perceived threat, adding too much is better than too little, too late.  

“The response that you witnessed today (Tuesday), that’s exactly what’s going to happen. We’re not going to wait. We’re going to put the boots on the ground and get everybody in there because you can always cancel afterwards,” Morris said. 

As police engulfed the campus Tuesday, rumors swirled on social media, including those listing students and a police officer among the shooting victims. Others indicated a shooting had taken place on the school’s football field. 

Ambulances arrived and departed the school grounds, stoking fears and speculation. 

While ultimately a hoax, the anxiety it caused was all too real for many. 

Parents whose primary urge was to rush to the scene to check on their children were told to stay away so as not to compound an already chaotic scene. 

The mother of a St. Marys Area football player — one of hundreds of students engaged in extracurricular activities at the school after hours on Tuesday — stood helplessly by in the parking lot of a downtown jeweler, pensively awaiting word on whether the shooting rumors were real, and if so, whether her child was among the victims. 

It was an emotionally charged scene that afternoon as panicked parents were reunited with their children at South St. Marys Elementary School, located roughly one mile from the grounds shared by the high school and middle school.  

The schools and grounds had a visible police presence at the start of the day on Wednesday. Assemblies convened to discuss the events of a day earlier with teachers and students. 

Caltagarone said school officials requested the police presence to ensure “everybody felt comfortable and was reassured that everything was safe and that it was safe to go to school.”  Officers were also stationed on the campus of a nearby Catholic school on Wednesday.  

A joint investigation into the incident by the state police and St. Marys City Police is ongoing.