Employee Allegedly Staged Shooter Hoax to Create “Trauma Bond” with Co-Workers

Employee Allegedly Staged Shooter Hoax to Create "Trauma Bond" with Co-Workers.

In order to "trauma bond" with her coworkers, a civilian employee who felt shunned by her peers reported a fictitious active shooter on Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, according to a federal complaint. U.S. Navy employee Malika Brittingham was charged Tuesday evening in federal court with intentionally and willfully spreading false information about an active shooter at the base, which resulted in an hour-long lockdown and the evacuation of multiple schools.

According to the complaint, which was submitted to the U.S. District Court in Trenton, Brittingham texted "Individual 1" at 10:14 a.m., claiming to have heard five or six gunshots and to have been hiding in a closet at the base with her coworkers.

After relaying what Brittingham had stated to 911, the recipient of the texts alerted law enforcement, and a lockdown was implemented. When investigators concluded there was no active shooter on the base, it was lifted.

When investigators discovered Brittingham at her base job at 11:46 a.m. and spoke with her, she admitted sending the texts in the hopes that someone would call 911 and start a police response, despite her initial claims that she sent them after the lockdown order was issued as authorities discovered she had sent them earlier.

Brittingham, who works at the Joint Base in New Jersey but is assigned to the U.S. Navy Warfare Center in Patuxent River, Maryland, "explained that she carried out this hoax because she had been ostracized by her co-workers and hoped that their shared experience in response to an active shooter would allow them to 'trauma bond,'" according to the complaint.

Information on Brittingham's hometown and age was not immediately available.