Police arrested Justin Bryant Pennington, 32, and charged him with false reporting of an emergency, a misdemeanor. Police said Pennington, who was previously arrested on Saturday in downtown Elkins for another incident involving a firearm, called 911 Tuesday morning with a story that wasn’t true.

Pennington is currently lodged in the Tygarts Valley Regional Jail on two $10,000 cash-only bonds.

At approximately 10 a.m. Tuesday morning, 911 operators received a call about a man walking the streets of Bridgewater Estates, possibly carrying an AR-15 assault rifle. Within minutes of the call, multiple local law enforcement agencies were on the scene.

“The call came in as an active shooter and that somebody was shooting over at Bridgewater,” Randolph County Sheriff Rob Elbon told The Inter-Mountain. “So of course we are going to take the situation very seriously. The call came in as an active shooter so we responded appropriately. Thank goodness it wasn’t something worse.”

A deputy from the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office looks on from the bridge next to the Scott Fords Fishing Pier Tuesday morning after a 911 call was made reporting an active shooter at Bridgewater Estates.

Once on the scene officers began a methodical search of the neighborhood for any suspects, according to a press release from the Elkins Police Department. Officers were able to locate Pennington in a vehicle and took him into custody. He was unarmed at the time but an unloaded handgun was later recovered near where Pennington was taken into custody.

“He (Pennington) told me he was the one that made the 911 call,” Elbon said. “During the search they (EPD) found a pistol of his on a relative’s front porch. This all happened just a couple days after the Elkins Police Department took another gun from him downtown during the Forest Festival. Two times in three days it could have turned out a lot worse for him because of his actions.”

Officers were able to determine that no shots had been fired within Bridgewater Estates, the EPD release states. Police say the threat was called into Randolph County 911 by Pennington himself while he was suffering from delusions and believing that he saw someone shooting an assault rifle.

“We don’t take calls like this lightly at all, it’s very, very serious,” Elbon said. “The next time it may not be a fake call, it may be real. You just don’t know what you’re going into when you respond to something like this.”

Bridgewater Estates was thoroughly searched to ensure that there was no other threat to the public. The nearby Jennings Randolph Elementary School was placed on lockdown until the situation was resolved Tuesday.

Pennington

“I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office, the West Virginia State Police, the Upshur County Sheriff’s Office, and Randolph County EMS for their rapid and effective response to this situation,” Elkins Police Chief Travis Bennett said.