A 54-year-old South Carolina woman was arrested for tricking her daughter into believing she was a victim in a school shooting Tuesday (April 1).
Virginia College employee Angela Timmons was charged with breach of peace, disturbing schools and illegal use of a telephone, for an April Fools’ Day prank that wasn’t actually funny.
Timmons sent a text message to her daughter about a shooting massacre at her job. The daughter called authorities who (of course) rushed to the college expecting the very worst. “I’m thinking Columbine High School, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech,” said Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright.
More than a dozen deputies responded to the call, before the daughter dropped found out about the joke.
“My mother works at Virginia College, and she just called me saying that they’re hiding in a file cabinet – a file office because there are gunshots on campus,” Timmons’ daughter according to 911 transcripts released by police. “She’s saying she’s still hearing gunfire and they’re hiding.”
At one point, Timmons went radio silent, making her daughter believe something may have happened to her. Then she owned up to the stunt. “Oh my goodness…” the daughter said. “She’s saying she’s playing an April Fools’ joke. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, sir. “I don’t think she really thought I would call 911.”
Timmons now realizes that she needs to get better at picking pranks. “I obviously chose a bad prank,” she said after she was released from custody.
She and her daughters apparently try and one-up each other every year, and she pretty much takes the cake for 2014. “‘On April Fools’ each year we try to out prank each other and I obviously chose, thinking now with recent events, a bad one,” she reiterated. “I certainly wouldn’t have, obviously I love my job, if I thought police would come out and use their time or my daughter certainly wouldn’t have called.”
The daughter refuses to publicly comment, but feels the story is getting blown out of proportion by the media.
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