..."Perpetuating the Stereotype," popping up occasionally when one of my beloved band of redneck brothers around here goes off and does something so startlingly--but stereotypically--idiotic that one cannot help but be embarrassed for the ridicule it brings down on the rest of us from folks who live beyond our borders.
But this one is a bit different--oh, sure, an idiot from Alabama, to be sure, but probably not one with a wall full of Dale Earnhart memorabilia and a case of Bud in the fridge: Calhoun Community College prof arrested for death threats
DECATUR, Ala. (AP) — A Calhoun Community College professor who claimed that a former student left a death threat on her voicemail has been arrested and charged with making the threats.
Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely said Penelope Blankenship, who taught criminal justice and sponsored the college's criminal justice club, [emphasis added] was charged with making a terrorist threat, a Class C felony punishable by two to six years in prison.
College telephone records led to the 43-year-old Decatur woman's arrest Friday.
"The initial suspect was investigated and interviewed and there was no way the person could have made those calls," Blakely told the Athens News Courier in a story Tuesday. "We subpoenaed Calhoun's phone records and determined that the incoming calls came from the cell phone of the instructor and, when questioned, she admitted making the calls."
A female left a voice message that mentioned last week's Virginia Tech shootings and said, "you next." The female also left a voice message for campus security threatening the instructor.
Blankenship told investigators she recognized the anonymous caller's voice,
but the investigation indicates that Blankenship made the calls through the Calhoun switchboard to security and to her own voice mail.
Good grief--if our smarty-pants college professors are this dumb, what hope is there for the rest of us laboring under the "ignert hick" label!?When asked why the instructor devised the hoax, Blakely said, "I can't comment on that. You will have to ask her that." [...]
If only she were a politician, she could claim it was a botched joke about George Bush.Let's just hope she's not started swapping tips with Deb Frisch.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at April 24, 2007 12:29 PMI must admit words fail me in describing that stunt. Even someone whose forensic education amounts to the CSI shows would know better than trying to pull a stunt like that without expecting to get caught.
Posted by: Stan at April 24, 2007 01:09 PMMaybe she WANTED to get caught. Weirder things have happened. Or she could be one of these cranks who feel compelled to bring to light the dangerous lapses in security they think they see, and then go off on some ad hoc exercise to expose those loopholes, then when they get caught, they beg to be let go because they're just trying to show how easy it is not to get caught.
I look for her to plead that this was going to be an assignment for her class to figure out, and it was--and I'm just guessing here--botched.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at April 24, 2007 01:28 PM