Alarm Clock Prank Brings Felony Charges

19 High School Seniors Charged With Planting False Bomb For Taping Clocks To School Walls

(CBS/AP)  Nineteen high school seniors have been charged with planting a false bomb -- a felony -- for a prank. The students sneaked into the school overnight and taped 20 alarm clocks to the walls. The clocks were timed to go off at the start of classes.

The Hendrick Hudson High School seniors appeared in Cortlandt Town Court on Monday morning. Fifteen of the 19 pleaded not guilty and four did not enter a plea because they had no attorneys.

The students are charged with second-degree placing a false bomb, which is a felony. If convicted, they each face up to four years in prison. They also
face one violation count of criminal trespass.

One attorney, John Sarcone of White Plains, who spoke outside the court, was angry that the students are banned from graduation on Friday. He said the students were innocent until proven guilty and they should not be penalized.

Dozens of other students have been ordered to perform at least five hours of community service for donating money or helping buy the clocks.

The students used a key that had been missing for a year to break into the school last weekend and then used duct tape to secure the clocks to hallway walls.

The students touched off a motion detector inside the school. State police who responded feared that the ticking clocks might be bombs and called in bomb-sniffing dogs.

“It never crossed anyone’s mind that this could be taken that way,” said Alex Kane, a senior who said he contributed $1 to the clock fund, told the New York Times.

One student, Ariel Billary, 18, was at the courthouse to offer support. She said keeping the students out of graduation also hurts the parents, who waited all these years to see their children graduate.

[lil_angels]

Has anyone lost site of the fact that these are children. Sure they are ready to graduate - but they aren't really mature. They are supposed to make mistakes and hopefully learn from them. I think the choice they made for a senior prank - while on the surface is creative and funny - required deeper thought for possible repercussions. We know you can't say the word bomb in an airport, nor can you joke about suicide, yet there are people who still do this.

These kids%u2019 brains are not developed enough to think beyond themselves. It's not necessarily a shortcoming of the parents - it's physiological. I think anyone who blames the parents either doesn%u2019t have teenagers, or can%u2019t remember what they did when they were kids. Was it your parents fault that you did stupid things as a teen? These kids still need many more years of life lessons to think beyond themselves. I think punishment is deserved if not required, but a felony is overkill. The threat of a felony has already taught them a good lesson. Hopefully the judge/jury who hear this case will keep that in mind.

[zurralaan]

The prank these kids pulled has got nothing on some of the things done by retired law enforcement officers that I'm friends with. Sure they deserve to get their buts chewed out and the *** scared outta them but felony charges just makes me believe a little bit more that this government is only a few steps away from taking away our rights and putting us on that very slippery slope that ends with the sound of jackboots marching down our streets. I can hear it now.

[gunownerdan]

Americans are affraid of their own shadows these days.
Frightened helpless imbeciles-
Just what the terrorists want!

[ttenchantr]

Does everybody think "bomb" first now? I hate this mindset. Every time the power goes out or more than three cars collide, we must first rule out terrorism. Seems the terrorists have won!

Anyway, I wish I had the money to send a case of alarm clocks to that bomb squad. When was the last time anyone ever heard a bomb tick like a alarm clock outside of Bugs Bunny cartoon?

[swtgapch]

What a pathetic bunch of idiots. And I don't mean the teens. No wonder kids hate going to school anymore. It is almost like prison. Pretty soon they will not be able to look at another person without getting put in lockdown. We are raising a generation of whiney little brats that have no idea what a joke is or how to laugh at themselves. The ones that do know what a joke is are punished for it. Reminds me of a stupid little guy named hitler.

[griking]

Oh please. These are 17-19 year old young men, not small children. They are (hopefully) educated since they were about to graduate. There is absolutely no way that any intelligent being can think that this isn't a very stupid thing to do. With the school shootings that make the front page what did they expect that people would think when they saw these devices throughout the school.

They should have been barren from graduation. Not just for the so called "prank" but because they were all obviously too stupid to let graduate.

[griking]

Oh please. These are 17-19 year old young men, not small children. They are (hopefully) educated since they were about to graduate. There is absolutely no way that any intelligent being can think that this isn't a very stupid thing to do. With the school shootings that make the front page what did they expect that people would think when they saw these devices throughout the school.

They should have been barren from graduation. Not just for the so called "prank" but because they were all obviously too stupid to let graduate.

[griking]

Oh please. These are 17-19 year old young men, not small children. They are (hopefully) educated since they were about to graduate. There is absolutely no way that any intelligent being can think that this isn't a very stupid thing to do. With the school shootings that make the front page what did they expect that people would think when they saw these devices throughout the school.

They should have been barren from graduation. Not just for the so called "prank" but because they were all obviously too stupid to let graduate.

[griking]

Oh please. These are 17-19 year old young men, not small children. They are (hopefully) educated since they were about to graduate. There is absolutely no way that any intelligent being can think that this isn't a very stupid thing to do. With the school shootings that make the front page what did they expect that people would think when they saw these devices throughout the school.

They should have been barren from graduation. Not just for the so called "prank" but because they were all obviously too stupid to let graduate.

[griking]

Oh please. These are 17-19 year old young men, not small children. They are (hopefully) educated since they were about to graduate. There is absolutely no way that any intelligent being can think that this isn't a very stupid thing to do. With the school shootings that make the front page what did they expect that people would think when they saw these devices throughout the school.

They should have been barren from graduation. Not just for the so called "prank" but because they were all obviously too stupid to let graduate.

[sjmiller05]

Thank god I'm not a kid anymore. All the *** we done would have put us away for life. I remember kids pulling fire alarms, blowing up toilets with M80s, bomb threats, smoking cigarettes, skipping school and getting into fist fights. Today, you can't even *** without getting suspended ! Pathetic, liberal world we live in.

[ben_76]

I think that its a shame that we live in a time these things must be taken this seriously, but here we are post 911. OK this prank is way over the top, these kids showed that their lack of reasoning and deduction of possible consequences is not developed. They should have known better to pull this sort of prank. They could have picked a prank that wouldn't result in a bomb squad being needed, they should be taught a lesson and pay for what they did. But, 18 yr olds are 18 yr olds and this kind of thing has happened as long as there have been 18 yr olds. Is society going to decide to punish high school graduates who got carried away right before their graduation at the end of the senior year and ruin their lives over it by sentencing them to jail time? How much good is going to be served by ruining their futures because of poor judgment made in a group capacity. Its obvious that no harm was done, that they got carried away in a bandwagon of "we're almost done with this place" attitude. I think the punishment needs to fit the crime and leniency needs to be shown here. Give them a punishment that makes amends for what they have done, not one that ruins their lives and creates a few more criminals using up tax payer dollars.

[deadanimal]

Hypnotoad,

You need to learn the definition of cynical.

cyn7i7cal [ smnnik'l ]
adjective
Definition:
1. distrustful of human nature: doubting or contemptuous of human nature or the motives, goodness, or sincerity of others

You and the authorities are the ones assuming the worst about these kids. You're the ones that are so scared of the world coming to get you that you assume they were trying to frighten people. If they were trying to scare people into thinking they were planting bombs don't you think they would have A)hid them and not taped them in plain view to the walls of the school and B) tried to make them look like a bomb with fake explosives attached.

They thought it would be funny if twenty alarm clocks went off simultaneously and, frankly, so would I.

You're the one who needs to get real.

[jn122736]

I agree with other poster here that intent is the basis for whether someone is guilty of a crime or not. I doubt if any jury could believe that 19 graduating seniors had intended to commit a felony.

They must have known that at least some of what they were doing was not legal, but no worse than speeding or even drinking and driving and certainly not a felony.

To force 19 young graduating students to face a lifetime of being labeled a Felon, for nothing more serious than a traditional prank, is definitely cruel and unusual punishment (unconstitutional). In some states felons lose their right to vote, among other things.

Yes, one should be held responsible for ones actions, but the penalty should at least be kept within reason.

[tonic1661]

I GAVE THREE ALARM CLOCKS FOR CHRISTMAS LAST YEAR.

BUT MY COVERT OPERATIONS HAVE AS YET GONE UNDETECTED,

I WILL STRIKE AGAIN. TONIGHT I INTEND TO TURN ON MY OWN ALARM CLOCK.

I SURE AM SCARY. HUH?

[hypnotoad72]

Let's be thankful it was just a prank. But it scared the cranberries out of enough people... and rightfully so. I'm glad they were arrested. It's a stupid and dangerous thing to do; playing on peoples' fears.

Much with people discussing suicide, pranks of this nature should NEVER be treated as a joke. Because for all intents and purposes, it's not a joke.

Are people so cynical these days that "It's just a prank, everybody lighten up, kids did pranks in the past" is now the norm? People need to get real. I applaud the authorities.

[deadanimal]

When I was in High School it was tradition for each graduating class to pull off one big prank in an attempt to "out do" the previous years class. For my senior year prank, we assembled a VW Beetle in the lobby of the administration building in the middle of the night. (We got in through a hatch in the roof.) The next day, after we confessed, our punishment was to remove the car after school. That's it. No harm was done. Everyone laughed. It was a prank.

Since Sept. 11th, we have lost our collective minds, not than many of us had one to begin with. Give these kids a break. It was a joke not a terrorist plot.

[slim1h2o]

9/11 DID change a lot. It made a majority of the American people into defenseless sheep crying for their government to "protect" them.
Posted by GunOwnerDan at 03:43 PM : Jun 18, 2007

The terrorists won folks, no doubt about that.
And Texas is right, just a prank, now they're terrorists. Thats a shame.

[rochest]

so the kids organized a dumb senior prank and got caught.....the police fearing the worst used due diligence so far so good but who brought the Charges seems to me that they are the ones that are making a mountain out of a molehill



is this prosecutorial misconduct? aren't there better crimes to be pursuing?

[hmmagain]

' ... most folk in eternity are too preoccupied to notice that there is an infinte number of governments, and most who notices don't care, and most who care don't dare, and most who dare don't care and most who care are overworked and underpaid, and most who aren't don't care, and most who care are getting more far more fast than anyone, yet getting nowhere at all ... '

' ... if a few drunk drivers kill, but most drunk drivers would take a bus if tvere was a bus to take, and an efficient bus service would cost less than a percent of what is put into the rest of the automotive industry, in fact less then one percent of what is put into the anti drunk driving industry, then are those who fail to promote buses for drunk drivers in lieu of promiting cars and other anti drunk driving efoorts guilty of fraud and conspiracy to commit murder and murder? ... '