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911 Call Spurs Fear and Evacuation, but Montreal Police Report No Threat | |
(about 3 hours later) | |
MONTREAL — Armed police officers converged Friday on the Montreal offices of Ubisoft, a French video game company, in response to a 911 call, and dozens of people were evacuated, but no threat was found and no injuries were reported. | |
During the police operation, local television reports showed Ubisoft staff on the roof of their office building with doors barricaded. A police SWAT van was seen in the area. | |
The police did not immediately clarify the nature of the 911 call. | |
Gilles Douaire, an online programmer at Ubisoft, said the episode appeared to have been a prank, “like somebody confused Friday the 13th with April 1st.” | |
In a LinkedIn message, Mr. Douaire said employees evacuated to the roof and to meeting rooms in adjacent buildings because the police were “not taking any chances.” Ubisoft Montreal is a campus that occupies several buildings in the area, he said. | |
Ubisoft employees said they had received instructions from the authorities telling them to barricade themselves, to hide and to put their phones in silent mode. | |
The incident convulsed the surrounding neighborhood, called Mile End, which is well known for its bagel emporiums, a large Hasidic community and a cluster of high technology companies, of which Ubisoft is one of the major players. | |
Martin Blais, who works in an art gallery across the street from Ubisoft, said he was enjoying a quiet afternoon when dozens of officers arrived around 1:30 p.m., some with guns drawn. He said the police went from shop to shop on the street, telling merchants and customers to barricade themselves inside. | |
Unsubstantiated rumors of hostage-taking at Ubisoft, some reported by local media, spread through the close-knit neighborhood, Mr. Blais said, further spurring anxiety. | |
He said he went to the roof of his building to see what was happening and spotted dozens of Ubisoft employees on their roof. By 3:45 p.m., he saw the police evacuating Ubisoft employees. | |
“It was frightening,” Mr. Blais said, “it wasn’t clear what was happening.” | |
Mr. Blais said his anxiety was compounded by the date, Nov. 13, the five-year anniversary of attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, the most lethal attack in France since World War II. | |
“The date is chilling,” he said. | |
Ubisoft has 17,000 employees at 55 studios around the world, making games like Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed and Just Dance. The Montreal office went through a major recruitment drive last year, and now has more than 3,000 employees, but because of the pandemic, many have been working remotely. |