Deaf man's note spurs bomb threat response on Metra train

Chicago Tribune ^ | September 13, 2011

[ConservativeStatement]

A miscommunication with a deaf person led police to erroneously believe a bomb threat was being made on a Metra train Monday night, leading to an emergency response, authorities said.

Riverside police said this morning a Metra conductor flagged down a police officer at 8:12 p.m. and reported that a passenger had passed him a handwritten note saying there might have been a bomb on the train.

[ConservativeStatement]

Casey Jones could not be reached for comment.

[TheBattman]

Some officers needed some overtime...

[bgill]

Hey, doesn’t everyone send notes to the conductor asking about bombs? Either the passenger was a soothsayer, a wacko, a terrorist, or really stuuupid. I’m siding with the conductor on this.

[COBOL2Java]

an investigation found that the 20-year-old Brookfield man who wrote the note was deaf and trying to tell the conductor that he had fallen asleep and had a dream the train was exploding, police said. When the deaf passenger awoke, he was worried that his dream might come true and was trying to communicate that to the conductor, they said.

Being somewhat familiar with the deaf culture, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the guy may have been trying to inquire whether there had been an explosion, not that there was going to be one. Pre-lingual deaf individuals can sometimes have difficulty expressing tense in English.

[bgill]

Perhaps, but in the time it took to write the note he could have noticed the other passengers were not in panic mode indicating an explosion had not occured.

[COBOL2Java]

Perhaps, but in the time it took to write the note he could have noticed the other passengers were not in panic mode indicating an explosion had not occured.

Good point. We may never find out what the full story was. For all we know, it's just as likely the guy fancies himself as some kind of psychic, or thought he was having a paranormal experience.

Will George Noory pick it up? Who knows! :-)

[I Shall Endure]

My former BIL was born deaf, and you’re absolutely right. Written communication from the deaf may look like English, but it’s really a foreign language.

[RobinOfKingston]

From the article:

The Metra train, which had stopped at the Longcommon Road crossing, continued on its run, ...

I'm surprised the train wasn't diverted to Omaha.