By Lester Haines for The
Register.
This story has been reproduced with permission.
Fifteen-year-old Cody Webb, of Greensburg, "called a school
district hot line to listen to a recorded message about school
delays at 3:12am EDT on 11 March", his mobile phone records later
revealed. The next morning, school officials discovered said bomb
threat logged at 3:17am.
The powers that be therefore concluded that "Webb had made the
threat because they also found a record of his phone call", the
lad's attorney Tim Andrews explained. The school's principal
confirmed his guilt by asking Webb for his cell phone number later
that morning and then quickly declared: "We got him. We got
him."
Webb refused to confess, was arrested "on a felony charge of
threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction and related
misdemeanor counts" and thrown into Westmoreland County Juvenile
Detention Centre for 12 days until the truth was revealed.
In fact, because the school had not reset the clock on the hot
line, which continued to show Eastern Standard Time, officials and
police failed to spot that the bomb threat had actually come in at
4:17am - more than an hour after Webb's innocent call.
Andrews explained: "The district attorney subpoenaed the cell
phone records, and it didn't take more than a minute to see the
times didn't match."
Webb was finally released "when a state trooper failed to show
up at another hearing". The charges were dropped on 27 March.
Andrews, unsuprisingly, added that "the boy's family is
considering a law suit against the school district or police for
false arrest". Webb said of his ordeal: "I wasn't going to admit to
something I didn't do. Me and God know I didn't do it."
© The Register
2007
