At least 70 people were evacuated from a Fair Oaks movie theater on Sunday (Nov. 2) after a mass shooting threat was reported to law enforcement.
The threat, which was later determined to be non-credible, was received by staff at the Regal Cinemas in Fairfax Towne Center (4110 West Ox Road, Suite 12110) around 8 p.m., according to the Fairfax County Police Department.
Members of the FCPD promptly responded to the theater to secure the building before assisting in evacuation efforts, police told FFXnow. They were followed by a SWAT team, which arrived at the scene around 8:50 p.m.
According to scanner traffic, a woman had called the theater claiming that her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend were on their way to the theater to “kill people.”
An initial investigation, however, found nobody inside the building matching the descriptions provided by the caller. The report was eventually deemed to be a hoax, police say.
Numerous people who claim to have been inside the theater at the time detailed their experiences on Reddit, though most expressed seemingly hyperbolic disdain for missing part of their movie.
“I just got evacuated from there — no one I asked knew what was going on,” one user wrote. “Lots of police cars, and just one ambulance and fire truck each that seemed to be standing by.”
Fairfax One, the FCPD’s primary response helicopter, was also deployed during the incident and circled the neighborhood for nearly an hour, according to air traffic tracker flightradar24.
