A caller said a child was held against their will. It was a hoax on Lexington police.

Lexington police say the department was a victim of a hoax on Thursday night that was similar to incidents across the nation called “swatting.”

Lexington Police Lt. Chris Van Brackel said Friday that officers initially received a call that a child was being held against his or her will at a farm on Paris Pike.

After officers arrived and investigated, they were able eventually to trace the call to Corpus Christi, Texas, Van Brackel said.

“We were able to determine that obviously, it wasn’t anybody on a farm in Lexington being held against their will,” he said. “We didn’t actually bring the SWAT team out, but we had quite a few units out there.”

Van Brackel said it was the first incident of its kind that he is aware of in Lexington in which the perpetrator of a hoax in another state makes a situation sound so dire that police respond with a significant presence.

He said Lexington officers never reached a point Thursday whether they thought they needed a SWAT team.

In late February, the Courier-Journal reported that a Louisville man was a victim of a SWAT prank. There have been other incidents nationwide.

This story was originally published April 5, 2019 at 11:07 AM.