Posted on 04/17/2007 2:15:29 PM PDT by bamahead
A fifteen-year old boy in America was incarcerated for twelve days, wrongly accused of making a hoax bomb threat - because his school had forgotten that the clocks had gone forward.
Cody Webb was arrested last month, after Hempfield Area High School received a bomb threat on their student hotline – which provides a range of information to students about the school - at 3.17am on March 11th. They believed they'd found the culprit when they traced the phone number they thought was responsible to Webb.
Unfortunately, they forgot that the clocks had switched to Daylight Saving Time that morning. Webb, who's never even had a detention in his life, had actually made his call an hour earlier.
Despite the fact that the recording of the call featured a voice that sounded nothing like Webb's, the police arrested Webb and he spent 12 days in a juvenile detention facility before the school eventually realised their mistake.
Webb gave an insight into the school's impressive investigative techniques, saying that he was ushered in to see the principal, Kathy Charlton. She asked him what his phone number was, and , according to Webb, when he replied 'she started waving her hands in the air and saying “we got him, we got him.”'
'They just started flipping out, saying I made a bomb threat to the school,' he told local television station KDKA. After he protested his innocence, Webb says that the principal said: 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.'
All charges against Webb have now been dropped.
He already has, according to my daughter who attends this school.
The principle is a PC piece of work. Cody is a good kid who happened to have the wrong ethnic background. She was hoping to make an example of him.
Mr. Policeman does not work for the arm waving Kathy Charlton.
He should of been satisfied himself that he was depriving the right person of his liberty.
Mr. Policeman should spend 12 days in jail.
ping
Agreed. But since she no longer has any power over this kid I don’t see what sending her a bunch of emails will do. She’ll get her’s as this thing plays out.
I graduated from Hempfield High...it is perfectly named.
This is poorly written, but making some assumptions it sounds as if they went over their caller id logs and retrieved the number that had called at 3:17pm when the bomb threat call was actually another hour further down the list.
Heads should roll. You don’t jail someone for 2 weeks before checking the evidence.
Not. He has been fully exonerated.
He is 15.
DeeDeeDee
My bad. 12 days was stuck in my head. 15 I can see. 12, certainly not.
Thanks for the correction (smacks forehead).
The taxpayers of the district are working on it. There is a school board election next month.
Thanks for the addition!
It sounds like this Principal generally treats her students unfairly and needs a serious wake up call.
ok, that part is now clear, but why would the kid be callin the school that early in the mornin anyway?
if this article were any more vague I’d swear it was written by my ex-wife who was ALWAYS vague when she was mad at me..
Yup, sure sounds like it. Nail the ignorant dolts. And these are the people who are supposedly educating the next generation. /spit
“I have no clue what is the point of this article.”
LOL. From here is the missing stuff...
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18169139&BRD=2212&PAG=461&dept_id=465812&rfi=6
Webb called a school district hot line to listen to a recorded message about school delays at 3:12 a.m. EDT on March 11, according to his cell phone records.
The next day, school officials found the hot line had recorded a bomb threat from a blocked phone number at 3:17 a.m.
School officials concluded Webb had made the threat because they also found a record of his phone call, his attorney Tim Andrews said.
The school’s recorder, however, was still on Eastern Standard Time, meaning the bomb threat really came in at 4:17 a.m. daylight time, more than an hour after Webb’s call, Andrews said.
When the principal asked Webb for his cell phone number later that morning and said, “We got him. We got him,” Webb did not immediately realize what she meant. When Webb refused to confess, he was arrested on a felony charge of threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction and related misdemeanor counts.
You're kidding, right? See, the school has a list of calls -- times and phone numbers. You know, like you see on your phone bill. They looked up the time of the bomb threat call, saw a phone number for a call at that time, matched it to the kid's cell phone, and viola, they thought they had the perp. Problem is, they looked up the wrong time because they were too stupid to account for daylight savings time, which means they looked up the wrong call and therefore the wrong number.
In other words, NO, the kid did NOT make the bomb threat.
What legitimate call would a student make to his high school at 2:17 in the morning?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.