Oct. 1 (UPI) — A civilian working at a U.S. Navy base in New Jersey is accused of falsely reporting an active shooter to create a “trauma bond” with her co-workers.
Federal court documents indicate Malika Brittingham is accused of sending a text to someone in which she claimed to have heard five or six gunshots and was hiding in a closet with some coworkers at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey on Tuesday morning, WPVI-TV reported.
“This kind of senseless fear-mongering and disruption will not be tolerated,” interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba said in a social media post on Tuesday, as reported by Military.com.
“After everything this country has gone through, especially in light of current events,” she continued, “I will be sure to bring down the hammer of the law for anyone found guilty of creating unnecessary panic and undermining public trust.”
The landlocked naval base is located about 40 miles northeast of Philadelphia in New Jersey’s Burlington and Ocean counties.
The individual who received the text at about 10:15 a.m. EDT reported it to the naval base and 911.
The base initiated an hour-long lockdown at about 11 a.m. until the “all clear” was sounded shortly before noon.
Brittingham said she sent the text after receiving an emergency notification that announced the lockdown.
Investigators determined her statement was not true based on the timing of the text that she sent versus those of the calls to the base and 911 and the emergency notification being issued, ABC News reported.
Brittingham then admitted to the hoax and told investigators that “she carried out the hoax because she had been ostracized by her co-workers and hoped that her shared experience in response to an active shooter would allow them to ‘trauma bond,'” according to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey.
Brittingham worked for the Naval Air Warfare Center and was arrested on Tuesday afternoon.