Posted on 09/13/2011 8:06:43 AM PDT by ConservativeStatement
A miscommunication with a deaf person led police to erroneously believe a bomb threat was being made on a Metra train Monday night, leading to an emergency response, authorities said.
Riverside police said this morning a Metra conductor flagged down a police officer at 8:12 p.m. and reported that a passenger had passed him a handwritten note saying there might have been a bomb on the train.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Some officers needed some overtime...
Hey, doesn’t everyone send notes to the conductor asking about bombs? Either the passenger was a soothsayer, a wacko, a terrorist, or really stuuupid. I’m siding with the conductor on this.
Being somewhat familiar with the deaf culture, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the guy may have been trying to inquire whether there had been an explosion, not that there was going to be one. Pre-lingual deaf individuals can sometimes have difficulty expressing tense in English.
Perhaps, but in the time it took to write the note he could have noticed the other passengers were not in panic mode indicating an explosion had not occured.
Good point. We may never find out what the full story was. For all we know, it's just as likely the guy fancies himself as some kind of psychic, or thought he was having a paranormal experience.
Will George Noory pick it up? Who knows! :-)
My former BIL was born deaf, and you’re absolutely right. Written communication from the deaf may look like English, but it’s really a foreign language.
The Metra train, which had stopped at the Longcommon Road crossing, continued on its run, ...
I'm surprised the train wasn't diverted to Omaha.
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