SimianOverlord's Journal: Schoolkid Jailed for Evil Zombie Army Threat

Rejected article for YRO/It's Funny, Laugh. Probably didn't contain enough spelling or grammer errors or inept moralising:

SimianOverlord writes:" The Register reports on the case of William Poole, a student at George Rogers Clark High School, Winchester, Kentucky, who is facing a second degree felony terrorist threatening charge for writing a short story about zombies attacking a high school. His grandparents discovered the short story and naturally informed the authorities. Poole protested: "My story is based on fiction. It's a fake story. I made it up. [...] Yes, it did say a high school. It was about a high school over ran by zombies. It didn't mention nobody who lives in Clark County, didn't mention [his school], didn't mention no principal or cops, nothing." A judge recently ruled in favour of prosecuters seeking to raise his bail from $1,000 to $5,000, on the grounds of the "seriousness of the charge". Winchester Police detective Steven Caudill explains: "Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it's a felony in the state of Kentucky.""

To be honest, I was in two minds as to the way the write-up should go. On the face of it, its simply a ridiculous situation that should be regarded as somewhat of a joke. On the other hand, it would be easy enough to rewrite as a flagrant and stupid abuse of anti-terror laws, or a freedom of speech issue. Anyway, it was rejected in about 2 minutes.

Damn Scary

[XopherMV]

So a kid can't write a fictional story that occurs in a natural setting for children, the school. It sounds like his story is similar to most of the shitty movies I've seen that are set in schools. Zero-tolerance policies really do translate to zero-brain policies. That just goes to show you how un-American we've become in the name of security.

More Details

[the_mad_poster]

Here [winchestersun.com]

I don't trust the Register to give me the straight story.

At any rate, it's just another example of "if they want to get you, they will". It looks like they have a bunch of fictional writing and they're turning it into a "this could've been a Columbine" story to get a conviction.

Watch what you write. Watch you think. Don't think bad thoughts. Happy thoughts happy thoughts.

Re:More Details

[SimianOverlord]

Yeah, the register is too tabloid for my tastes. Situation isn't as clear cut as the write up suggests, is it? I just figured the cops wanted this guy on some other charge they couldn't get him on, so cooked this up.

This kid is dumb. He doesn't seem much of a threat. He sounds like he wants to be notorious. He probably isn't a terrorist.

Re:More Details

[the_mad_poster]

Sounds more like overreaction to me. The kid wrote some stories about people planning to overtake a school and they're using that as evidence that he intended to attack his own school.

It's still quite ridiculous, just not quite AS ridiculous as the register makes it out to be. The kid claimed that the stories were about zombies, but the stories don't appear to have anything to do with zombies, yet they're still only stories.