Butt-Dialing Leads to SWAT Intervention

WINNETKA, Ill. - Most people with a cell phone have gotten these calls before: a garbled voice, maybe some traffic noise or distant music, but otherwise no person directly speaking to you on the other end of the line.

Butt-dialing, the act of sitting on or accidentally bumping your cell phone's keys and dialing someone without your knowledge, is normally a mild annoyance.

In Winnetka, Ill., however, it became a SWAT incident on Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune reports.

When an unidentified man butt-dialed his wife, he was listening to rap music with aggressive lyrics. The wife became worried her husband may have been taken hostage, so she called the police, the Tribune reports.

SWAT teams were then dispatched and swarmed the Winnetka school where the man worked, the Tribune reports.

Armed with automatic weapons and wearing bulletproof vests, SWAT team members circled the school about 5 p.m. Monday, searching for a reported gunman who might be holding a hostage, the Tribune reports. The all-clear sounded nearly three hours later, after the man was found safe at home by police.

"He's embarrassed," the school district superintendent told the Tribune. "Who wouldn't be? He's taking it hard that it created such a response."

In addition to the SWAT team, that response included at least three TV helicopters and dozens of concerned neighbors outside the school, where students had already been dismissed for the day, the Tribune reports.

Officials told the Tribune that no one would be charged since there was no intent to deceive police.