Original ! ...
Spanish schoolboy fakes kidnap to avoid parents´evening
Police officer´s 11-year-old son, who claimed he was being driven away in the boot of a car, was found hiding in family home
The Guardian
It was both dramatic and creative
– but it was also one of the most over-the-top solutions ever invented for
avoiding that well-known childhood nightmare, when parents are called in to
talk to their teachers.
Early on Monday afternoon the
unnamed 11-year-old son of a Spanish police officer stationed in the
north-western town of Xinzo de Limia sent a text message from his mobile phone
to tell his father he had been kidnapped.
When his father phoned back, the
boy confirmed the worst. He had been snatched off the street as he was putting
out the rubbish, he said, and was locked in the boot of a car. He had no idea
where his kidnappers were taking him, but knew that the car he was in was a
blue Seat.
The worried father told his
commanders and, as the news was relayed around civil guard barracks across the
province of Ourense, his colleagues hurriedly set up roadblocks. A nationwide
alert was released in case the vehicle had left the province.
Police in neighbouring Portugal
were also informed amid worries that the boy's kidnappers may have fled across
the border.
Local newspapers flashed the news
on their websites and ran photographs of heavily armed police manning
roadblocks.
It was only two hours later that
the boy's father noticed the keys to a spare flat owned by the family were
missing.
The child was soon discovered
there and reportedly explained that he had been terrified by the prospect of
his parents going to school to speak to his teachers.
"The civil guard attributed
the false alarm to a childish 'prank' that had something to do with the boy's
situation at school," the local Faro de Vigo newspaper reported.
"The child's poor school
scores in recent weeks appear to explain a form of behaviour that no one in
Xinzo could understand," said the Voz de Galicia newspaper. "He and
his parents were due to meet his class tutor that afternoon."
They did not report on whether
that meeting had now been cancelled – or merely delayed.