Boy fakes own kidnapping, causes nationwide ‘manhunt’

When an 11-year-old boy faked his own kidnapping to stop a parent-teacher meeting, APB alerts, roadblocks, and news crews got involved in an extended nationwide manhunt to find the allegedly kidnapped boy, reported Yahoo! News on Jan. 24, 2013.

“A manhunt was launched with roadblocks, and news reports and APB alerts were sent out. Law enforcement was even watching the Portugal border in case the phantom kidnapper tried to cross over.”

The manhunt for the “kidnapped boy” from the Spanish town of Xinzo de Limia in the Spanish northwestern region of Galicia ended when the kidnapped boy’s father realized that the keys to the family’s second residence, an apartment, were missing.

And sure enough, there was the supposedly kidnapped boy hiding, “safe and sound.”

For how long that “safe and sound” lasted for the boy is another story and unknown since the kidnapped boy’s mom and dad were most likely not too impressed about their son getting in trouble to get out of trouble because of his poor grades in school.

And trying to get out of trouble because of his poor grades is how the boy's kidnapping story began.

According to a Daily Telegraph report, the boy told his father that “he was terrified at the prospect of his parents to speaking to his teacher.”

In order to stop his parents from going to the parent-teacher meeting, he came up with the plan of having been kidnapped.Kidnapped boys and the parents of kidnapped boys will not go to any parent-teacher meeting, seemed a reasonable enough plan.

On the morning before his parents were supposed to meet with his teacher, the boy sent his father a text message “saying he had been kidnapped and stuffed in the back of a car.”

When the boy’s father immediately returned his kidnapped son’s call, the boy spoke in hushed tones and said that “he had been grabbed outside their home by a man while taking out the rubbish [trash] and was bundled into the back of a blue Seat.” He then said that he didn’t know where he was being taken, faked phone static, and hung up.

“The father, a policeman in the Galician town of Xinzo de Limia, immediately issued a nationwide alert and Civil Guard colleagues swiftly set up roadblocks across the province. Even police authorities in Portugal were informed in case the supposed kidnappers had fled across the border.”

In addition to the law enforcement manhunt, the local media appealed for information about the boy’s kidnapping and asked for the public’s help in finding the 11-year-old schoolboy. Local newspapers “splashed” the report about the boy’s kidnapping on their websites along with “photographs of heavily armed police manning checkpoints.”

After the “kidnapped boy” was found safe and sound by his father within two hours, the nationwide manhunt was called off. Despite the intense involvement of several public law enforcement agencies, the police decided not to press any charges and considered the boy’s kidnapping adventure a prank gone wrong.

"’The Civil Guard attributed it to a childish prank that had something to do with the boy's situation at school,' said a report in the local Faro de Vigo newspaper.”

While the ending of the boy’s own fake kidnapping story is known, the ending of the parent-teacher conference is yet unknown; -- and will most likely stay that way.

More articles by this author…

Money/Shopping: