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.
Nice job there, Columbo.
All control freak need to rounded up and sent to concentration camps.
WTF?The police were willing to arrest the kid on such flimsy evidence?What about a bail hearing-12 days is way too long.I hope the lawyers hang a whole bunch of people out to dry for this mess.
The next time some website asks for your email address to authenticate and you don’t want spam, use that email address. She’s about to get deluged.
What about a bail hearing-12 days is way too long.
***Standard procedure when you know you’re innocent and the intent is to sue the living daylights out of someone. I knew a security guard whose fingerprints came back hot as a match for a rape in San Jose and he got arrested. He kept telling the police that he could prove he was working at the time, but they didn’t listen. His lawyer could have got him out within a day or 2, but he kept him in so that the damages would be greater. He made a bit of money off that work of incompetence.
I’m just curious what would be deemed legitimate. I have a habit of wondering about the interesting and irrelevant.
Back in the day, when I was 15, the only reason I’d better be on the phone at two in the morning would be that I was calling my parents to tell them about the wreck that was keeping me out past curfew.
Sweeeeet.
Cheers!
Yea, as much as I’m against lawsuits, idiots *deserve* to be sued whent they infringe on people’s freedoms.
Of course.
Why would a kid make a "legitimate" call to his school at either 3:17am or 4:17am?
The geniuses will probably try to charge him with truancy. He is going to be so rich he can drop out if he wants.
Still the question that pops up is still valid.
4:17 am???
Sounds like the f**kin Soviets to me. If you offend the government then you’re “crazy.”
No need to get nasty.
Without going to outside links for the missing facts, the story is incomprehensible.
I would make a nice principal, actually.
To listen to a recording about school delays the next day.
A doozy indeed. Cripes . . .
I apologize, just could’t resist. Sorry.
No doubt they called him at that number to have him come into the office so they could ask him what his phone number was too ;-)
...but I bet she was always right too huh ?
Wow! I hope this educator never gets the opportunity to sit on a jury.
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