A school custodian’s impromptu after-hours karaoke performance prompted a police response when a teacher thought she was being threatened over the loudspeaker.
State police say a teacher at Booth Free School barricaded herself inside a classroom Wednesday when she mistook someone singing a Guns N’ Roses song over the public address system for a threat.She was working after hours and thought no one else was in the building. Then she heard someone say over the loudspeaker that she was going to die. Six troopers and three police dogs showed up and found three teenagers, one of them a custodian at the school, who had been playing with the public address system. Police say one of them sang “Welcome to the Jungle” into the microphone. The song contains the lyrics “You’re in the jungle baby; you’re gonna die.”
The teenagers were cuffed on the ground for about 15 minutes while police investigated. They were released after being questioned and state police Sgt. Brian Ness said they did not realize the teacher was in the school and will not face charges.
“These things happen,” Van Ness said. “Luckily it was humorous. You kind of have a gut feeling. As soon as we got there, we spoke to the three kids. They understood.”
Sounds like the stuff I would have done in my youth. A harmless prank 20 years ago, will get you killed today. Kudos to the cops for not overreacting and whipping out the taser.
Oh good grief.
This was not even a prank. It was just clean, honest, good, healthy fun. Who wouldn’t want to hear their voice echo thru the halls of an empty school?
This is why ZERO TOLERANCE rules are so necessary. Each of those violators should have been jailed, expelled, counselled, and a record started on them.
Imagine scary someone they didn’t know was there. They should have thought it through.
Eh the teacher just over reacted. This is the result of over-sensationalism of tragic events like school shootings on news channels.
Hobbo… You must not have ever been a kid….
I wonder what the teacher would do today if she found her car miraculously appear, completely road ready, parked inside the band hall? Now that’s a prank (and a lot of work).
Kudos to the teenagers. They probably did exactly what the cops to do and not run or reach for the waistbands, so the cops didn’t have to “overreacting and whipping out the taser”. Cops were able to quickly learn what was going on and uncuff the kids without the chaos of a chase.
The teens also seem to be reasonable that they didn’t know the teacher was still there and could see her point of view. Especially after the shootings in the past couple days.
[Duplicate comment. – Deleted. – ed.]
Hey Bobbo? I’m confused. Do you think it was good clean fun, or that they really should be stuck in jail with serious criminals for thier first offense?
For what it’s worth it makes me very happy that the cops were cool about it. And it makes me think that maybe school teachers should have a continuing education class on pop culture, so they can at least understand where these kids are coming from. After all part of growing up is having fun, making mistakes, and getting the Led out. (that means listening to Rock and Roll, though i wish more of todays kids would listen to musicians like Kevin Ayers)(For what that’s worth)
weenie ‘teacher’.
Geez, I wonder what my high school pranks would cause in the way of outrage and justice systems if I were doing in NOW instead of then?
We filled a teachers VW Bus with blown up balloons (and later wadded up newspapers), TP’ed houses, wrote things in flour on the school lawn (and select people’s houses), TP’ed cars, found chalk to be quite useful to write open messages to various people (on the sidewalk infront of their homes)..this was to one particular bully…it was expression our opinion about their recent acts of evil, for all to read and see…among other things. I guess if I were in school today two things are obvious: I would have never graduated and been expelled, and second, I’d probably be in jail as a terrorist.
Isn’t it sad that we have to give ‘kudos’ to the cops for not being jack-booted thugs? What the HELL, man?