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Toronto Police have released the audio of the faked emergency call which led them to send a SWAT team to a Richmond Hill address on Sunday.

When police burst into the Toronto-area home early Sunday morning, complete with emergency firepower, they were under the impression that the homeowner was barricaded inside, having killed his family with an assault rifle.

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From listening to the call an emergency dispatcher received, it’s easy to tell why.

The call, embedded below — where what sounds like a distressed young man says he is hiding in a closet from his father who has already shot his mother — is chillingly realistic.

Dispatcher: Where’s your mother? Caller: He shot her {sniff} he’s in the kitchen.

Const. Andy Pattenden, a media relations officer at York Regional Police, says these tricks have happened in the area before, and are difficult to prevent.

“Our communications people will do the best job they can to vet the information coming in. The challenge though is that time is of the essence. This, for us, would be considered an active shooting call,” Pattenden said in an interview with the National Post.

In this case, the call abruptly ended before the dispatcher could tease out many specific details, and if the call was real, time was of the essence.

“These calls can be challenging because they could be technically coming from anywhere in the world,” Pattenden said.

With files from Davide Mastracci