Tuesday, August 7, 2007

An e mail would have worked

I am sure that many of us have either met someone on the Internet or know someone who has these days. As much and as often as you chat, it is still very much a blind date at times and sometimes, people change their minds before the meeting. There are plenty of common excuses for calling it off such as honesty, in telling them you just don't want to meet, the dozens of believable lies including, a relative is suddenly ill, your car broke down or you have a sudden debilitating disease.

In early June 2007, Sara White, 20, of Turlock CA, confronted that issue when she suddenly got cold feet about meeting someone she had met on the Internet. For some reason, she chose a rather interesting excuse for not meeting him. She called him, stating that three men had hit her on the head and tossed into the back of a car. She then claimed that she was being driven all over town in the trunk of the car.

The incident was reported to the police who then called White on her cell phone. She continued with her "tale," telling police that she was now being taken into a house. She described a house in Sacramento and police later found a home that matched her descrpition. By this time, the Sacramento police, the California Highway Patrol and other police agencies had gotten involved.

Later in the day, White told police she had been brought to a McDonalds and a Wal-Mart store. It was at about that time that police realized that her story was a hoax and they caught up with her at her Turlock home. She has since been arraigned on a criminal charge of abusing police dispatch services.

Instead of just calling her prospective Internet date, White chose quite a wild tale that set off a massive police search. Maybe the visit to the police station and court will remind her of how easy it would have been to just send the guy an e mail.

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