A man living in Ohio tried to divert Canadian police in Ottawa with a bogus bomb threat to show support for truckers in the country who are protesting COVID-19 restrictions.
Instead, the unidentified 20-year-old man actually called police in Ottawa, Ohio—a village in Putnam County, roughly 50 miles southwest of Toledo.
After he allegedly made his bogus bomb threat (to the wrong police department) this individual then followed up and called them again, falsely claiming he’d been shot. Upon being advised that his call would have to be forwarded to the authorities in Canada, a light bulb must have suddenly gone off. He sheepishly admitted to the police that he hadn’t been shot and that he was simply trying to “divert the attention of Ottawa, Canada police.” According to Epstein, after realizing he had just made a bomb threat to an Ohio police department instead of one in Canada, the man then acknowledged he didn't really have a bomb and was "just trying to waste their time and resources because [he didn't] like their mask mandates.”
Forget for a moment the plain malevolence of attempting a swatting tactic to disrupt law enforcement activity already besieged by a crisis; forget the stupidity of attempting to do so without bothering to check the area code of the number you are calling; forget even the incalculable serendipity of actually screwing it up so badly you mistakenly call a law enforcement agency in your home state—not once, but twice. All of those things are equally stupid, in fact, incredibly so.
But the truly, gobsmackingly stupid was still to come:
When [police] called the man back to let him know that he may face charges, the man apologized, admitting his mistake. The man then tried to defend himself by saying his threat was for a different country—not the US.
According to CBC News, the individual has now been arrested. The sheriff’s office of Ottawa, Ohio, is preparing a report to the prosecutor recommending consideration of swatting charges.
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