Anonymous caller makes fake report of armed man at South Point Walmart

A report of a gunman at the South Point Walmart on over the weekend turned out to be false.

“We got a call that came in of a person in a bullet-proof vest and a gun and we determined that it was a false alarm,” said Lawrence County Sheriff Jeff Lawless.

He said the report came in Sunday afternoon and the department took immediate action.

“There was a deputy inside Walmart that was taking care of a shoplifter when the call came in and he went out to the parking lot and found nobody,” Lawless said.

Lawless said that Walmart security pulled all the video footage of the parking lot and “there was no such vehicle, no such person. There wasn’t even a vehicle anything close to the description of the one the caller gave us,” he said. “Nobody entered Walmart with any kind of weapon and we didn’t see anyone walking around the Walmart parking lot.”

Lawless said the call came in anonymously, so there wasn’t a number for the sheriff’s office to call back.

“So from all indications we had a false alarm and why, I don’t know,” he said. “But thank God it was a false alarm. It is not a fun time waiting to see what was going on up there.”