Get book. Throw it. Repeat.

Washington man accused of faking emergency call that sent armed response to unsuspecting Lake Forest family’s home.

On March 29 at 11:30 p.m., authorities allege, Randall Ellis, a 19-year-old from Mukilteo, Wash., hacked into the [Orange County California's] 911 system from his home and placed a false emergency call, prompting a fully armed response to the home of an unsuspecting couple that could have ended tragically.

Thinking that a prowler was roaming his back yard, a resident of the home, identified only as Doug B. in the district attorney’s complaint filed in court, walked outside with a kitchen knife as SWAT officers from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department waited with assault rifles.

Authorities do not believe this is the first time the suspect has done this.

Ellis is expected to appear in an Orange County courtroom Monday to face charges of computer access and fraud, false imprisonment by violence, falsely reporting a crime and assault with an assault weapon by proxy.

That’s gonna leave a mark.

Now that I think about this, I’m surprised that it hasn’t happened more often. It’s apparently a growing trend known as “SWATting”.

Nice.

(via Instapundit and Slashdot)

Tags: CA, WA

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Law Enforcement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.