Boy calls 911 49 times from Texas school
Wed Nov 22, 6:06 PM ET
Police in this Austin suburb were stumped for hours by the 49 emergency calls that kept coming in from an unregistered cell phone. The caller would say nothing before hanging up, sometimes after a brief giggle. Eventually, though, police found their man, er child: a 7-year-old calling from his elementary school classroom just for kicks.
"He was just doing it for fun because he had a cell phone," said Eric Poteet, spokesman for the Round Rock police "The only number that would work was 911."
The phone had been deactivated. Because the phone had no account attached to it during the Nov. 14 calling spree, dispatchers couldn't pinpoint where the calls came from. Instead, they used cell phone relay towers to define an approximate area, Poteet said.
During one of the calls, dispatchers heard classroom chatter in the background and decided to check out the elementary school. Once they found the boy, the officers confiscated the phone and called his parents, Poteet said.
Although making silent or abusive calls to 911 is a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine, the boy was not charged because of his age, Poteet said.
