Teenage prank turns into 'kidnapping' scare

When a teenage girl decided to play a prank on her father, things went terribly wrong, as a Spanish police officer stopped his vehicle and pulled a gun on him. However, it could have been much, much worse.

A 13-year-old girl in Valencia, Spain decided to play a silly and childish joke on her dad. She held up a sign in the car, while they were driving along, which read: "Help. I'm being kidnapped."

 

Her father had no idea what she was doing, but when an off-duty Spanish Civil Guard officer got a glimpse of the sign he did not hesitate in his attempts to "rescue" the poor girl.

 

He swerved his car so as to block and force the alleged kidnapper's vehicle to stop. The officer then jumped out of the vehicle and pointed a gun at the girl's father's head, ordering him out of the vehicle, with hands on head.

 

The shocked father obeyed, all the time assuring the officer that he was the father of the girl.

 

It didn't take too long for the teenager to admit to the joke. However, the off-duty officer had already alerted the authorities to what he thought was a serious incident, which then drew a large deployment of police officers to the scene.

 

Once it had been established that they were, indeed, father and daughter, they were both allowed to leave the scene with no charge.

 

However, its pretty certain the teenage prankster will have quite a bit of explaining to do.

 

This isn't the only time that a faked kidnapping has gone wrong in Spain, as Digital Journal reported recently on a stag night prank that ended up in the Madrid headlines as an armed kidnapping.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/354540

Stag night prank hits headlines in Madrid as 'armed kidnapping'

The media reported a "masked and armed kidnapping" in Madrid last Friday. Only later did the actual "victim" see the police reports and realized they were talking about his stag party!

Madrid police had received several calls from worried bystanders on Friday, saying that two masked gunmen had rushed a victim at gunpoint into a black Mercedes, in Salamanca, an upmarket Madrid neighborhood.

The story hit the media on Sunday. 37-year-old IT worker José Manuel Conde was browsing the Spanish daily El Mundo on Sunday and saw the kidnapping story. He immediately thought, "Shit, that's my stag party!"

He told the media that the unusual party pickup was his friend, David's idea. David, with the help of a third man, collected poor José, bundled him into the car and rushed him off to the party.

"We had to see how to get him there (to the party) and I had the idea of the kidnapping," David explained.

"We parked the car and the first thing we did was put on our balaclavas."

David did say that they had warned several people in the area, while they were waiting for José to finish work and that most people were laughing during the "kidnapping."

However, he added that "Someone else must have seen us from a distance and misinterpreted it."

David and his friend captured José, whose marriage is set for July 27, covered his head with a bag and threw him into the trunk of the Mercedes. 

"He believed it for about 20 minutes, he was scared, then he started laughing." 

"When I read the news in El Mundo I freaked out a bit," added David.

On seeing the media reports, David immediately phoned the police, who for some reason couldn't see the funny side of the story, and told him to visit the police station. Once there, he was sternly warned that they had been playing "a dangerous game". 

To the source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/354094