This is a breaking story, and updates are ongoing.
On Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025, at 7:30 p.m., Kahlert Village went on lockdown due to a Salt Lake Police Department report of an aggravated assault situation involving a girl being stabbed 15-20 times.
“Aggravated assault is an assault likely to cause serious bodily injury or death or with a weapon,” said U Police Sergeant Jason Miller in an in-person interview with The Chronicle.
Student accounts postulated that the stabbing was on the fourth floor of the Community Engagement tower. Kahlert Village residents claimed that the assailant was the victim’s boyfriend, who had an AR-15.
“It appears to be a swatting incident,” said President Taylor Randall to The Chronicle in a brief in-person exchange at the Department of Public Safety building at 9:00 p.m.
At 9:07 p.m. during a press conference at the Department of Public Safety, the police confirmed the incident was swatting. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defines swatting as “a malicious act that can involve placing false emergency calls to emergency responders, often reporting a [false] severe, ongoing crisis at a specific location.” Miller described it as “like a hoax.”
Residential Advisors and Housing staff were not initially informed about the situation. According to Deputy Chief Safety Officer Scott Carver, the call reporting the stabbing was anonymous. A program was used to alter the caller’s IP, making identification for local police highly difficult. “It is a dangerous, touchy situation whenever those kind of calls come in, whether they be real or whether they be a hoax,” Carver said. “[Police] treat them as legitimate until we can prove they’re not.”
As police evaluate these kinds of situations, information they receive is “typically very sparse. It’s inaccurate to the campus. It is unverifiable,” Carver said. He said safety alerts can be a “double-edged sword.”
“[Alerts] can cause a huge amount of anxiety and confusion and chaos when that may not be necessary to do,” Carver said. Additionally, social media “causes a lot of confusion as well, because misinformation can be picked up and repeated over and over and over,” he said.
After the press conference, a University of Utah safety alert reading “Swatting incident at Kahlert Village was not a credible threat. More info in email and at trusted link below” was sent at 9:48 p.m.
Editor’s note, Nov. 12, 9:50 p.m. • This article was updated to correctly reflect President Randall’s statement to The Daily Utah Chronicle.
