A FEMA spokesman cracked a joke on Facebook Monday afternoon about the ongoing search for a reported gunman at Yale University.
John Hamill, director of external affairs for the FEMA office in Oakland, Calif., wrote “Waitlisted…” after seeing a Facebook post reporting that students and staff had been ordered to “shelter in place” at the locked-down Ivy League school. The gunman threat was likely a hoax, police said later on Monday.
The commentary was posted about 1:15 p.m. to the Facebook page of Joanne Wasserman, an editor for the Capital NY Web site and a former colleague of Hamill’s.
Wasserman’s Facebook timeline includes all her posts to Twitter, where she re-Tweeted a USA Today alert about the Yale incident.
Reached by phone at his FEMA office, Hamill said the post “was a mistake on my part” and “just a bad error in judgment.”
“I thought I was doing it on my personal email and I’m taking it down,” he said.