Teen with Cell Phone Shuts Down Ford Assembly Plant

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

In a real-life demonstration of just how fragile and vulnerable the American economy really is, a 19-year-old man in the Kansas City area who was armed only with a cell phone and an app to conceal his identity managed  to "swat" a Ford Assembly plant in Claycomo, Missouri, that employees over 7,250 individuals last Tuesday and get the evening shift of over 2,500 people sent home for the night.

Nineteen-year-old Zachariah Peterson of Independence, Missouri, was arrested and charged with making a terroristic threat after it was determined by law enforcement that he had made a hoax call to the Ford Assembly Plant in Claycomo saying that a disgruntled employee was barricaded in a restroom at the six-million-square-foot manufacturing facility, and that he was armed with an automatic rifle, three magazines of ammunition, a pistol, and a pound of C-4 explosive.  The plant was evacuated and production was halted for the entire evening shift while law enforcement from Claycomo, Clay County, Kansas City, Gladstone, North Kansas City, Liberty, Platte County, and the FBI were called in to conduct a search and to investigate the call.  The search of the immense facility took six hours and the threat ultimately proved to be false.

Peterson told investigators that he had made the call in order to get a friend off of work at the factory.  Later, when he was arraigned before a judge, he pleaded "not guilty" and said that he had been "forced" to make the call.  There is no word yet as to whether the friend who was working at the Ford Plant was a party to the hoax call or not.

Several news stories referred to this prank, or hoax, or criminal activity as an incident of "swatting," or the intentional disruption of a business or enterprise by making a false claim that results in emergency services being called - such as a S.W.A.T. team.

In this case the disruption was massive and expensive, with multiple law enforcement agencies responding and working the situation for several hours, Ford Motor Company having its operation halted throughout an entire shift, and the routines of 2,500 workers and their families upended.

Zachariah Peterson faces as much as seven years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.