The School Shootings Were Fake. The Terror Was Real

January 23, 2025 at 12:12AM

Over the span of 24 hours in Spokane, Washington, a teen named Alan Filion who went by the handle “Torswats,” called law enforcement dozens of times, claiming he was about to become a school shooter. Methodical to a fault, Filion set about targeting a school in every county in the state, just to see how much chaos he could cause. Little did Filion know that a private detective named Brad Dennis was watching him work in real time. Dennis used his computer hacking skills to unravel a series of pseudonyms leading to Torswats and had handed over his findings to the FBI. Now all they needed to do was take action.

The chaos, the fear, the dread and immense disruption triggered by that one haunting voice on the phone wasn’t targeted at Spokane alone. The call was one of dozens that a person who went by the online handle Torswats would make to law enforcement, targeting schools across Washington state over a little more than 24 hours.

In some calls, the person told dispatchers he wanted to kill students for Satan. In others, he said it was because he was new to town and people treated him “like shit.” In others still, like the one to Spokane, he seemed to have become bored enough with the game that he didn’t bother to make up a reason. Armed with little more than his monstrous voice, an internet-based calling application routed through an anonymous proxy server, and a recording of gunfire taken from the video game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Torswats terrorized half the state, paralyzing schools, weaponizing civilians’ own police forces against them, temporarily shutting down entire communities, again and again and again.

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from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/01/22/the-school-shootings-were-fake-the-terror-was-real/
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The School Shootings Were Fake. The Terror Was Real