The glass front door of a yoga studio in the Squamish Business Park was still boarded up on Monday (May 12), four days after an apparent incidence of “swatting,” Squamish RCMP say.
On Thursday (May 8), someone phoned the Squamish RCMP non-emergency number to report that someone was being held hostage at gunpoint at Bikram Yoga Sea to Sky on Commercial Place. Because of the nature of the call, the RCMP reception staff member immediately transferred it to E-Comm, the police emergency 911 call centre, RCMP Staff Sgt. Brian Cumming said on Friday (May 9).
“The call came into our office and because of mention of potential violence and guns, we immediately forwarded it to E-Comm as a 911 call,” Cumming said, adding that the caller didn’t provide an address but said the incident was occurring at the studio.
The caller also didn’t give his or her own phone number, and because the call was transferred and not made directly to 911, there was no way to trace the call, Cumming said.
Police, though, had to take the report seriously, and dispatched a team to the studio. The team was prepared to deal with a hostage situation, possibly involving firearms, Cumming said.
Jena Steele, the studio’s owner, on Monday said the studio had been broken into a month earlier and when she first received the call, she thought it was a similar incident. Steele, who was home with her three-week-old baby at the time of last week’s incident, said a person who teaches at the studio had conducted a class in the morning but that the studio was vacant and locked up when police arrived.
Steele said she phoned and asked her business manager — her mother Mary Steele — to go to the studio and see what was happening.
That’s when she learned the nature of the call — and the police response to it. When Squamish RCMP arrived, the studio was locked but they had to take the report seriously, Cumming said.
“Everything was locked up tight, and we broke our way in to be sure that there was nobody being held there. We found that there was nothing happening there,” he said.
When Mary Steele arrived, bits of glass from the broken door had been tracked around the business, Jena Steele said.
“She said the glass was a mess because it has that mesh in it. When they got in, they tracked the glass around the place and it was strewn around,” she said.
Cumming said Squamish RCMP don’t believe the call was in any way linked to some other crime, but was merely “a prank.” If so, it would be an incidence of something that’s being called “swatting,” which the Globe and Mail described in a recent article as “a hoax designed to get a police SWAT [special weapons and tactics] team to respond to fake emergency calls about a gunman or a bomb.”
The incident prompted Jena Steele to put up a notice on Facebook Squamish Speaks expressing dismay and anger that someone would do such a thing. She told The Chief she’s glad no one — neither herself, her two young children nor any instructors or clients — was inside the studio at the time.
“I’m just devastated that someone would want to cause us any grief,” Steele said. “I know my staff and clients, everyone tells us that they find it a very comforting and healing place, so to me, it’s shocking and upsetting that someone would do this.”
She thanked Brian Loverin, a local man who saw her Facebook post and went to the studio to board up the door, and others who have offered their support.
“It’s nice to know that when something like this happens, there are people in the community who are willing to step up and help out in a crisis,” she said.
Steele said she’s still examining how best to pay for repairs, adding that while she business has insurance, the deductible is probably too high to justify making a claim.
Cumming said police have no leads that might help determine who placed the call, but urged anyone with information to call Squamish RCMP at (604) 892-6100 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
