A bit of indulgence in a senior tradition has left 18-year-old student Tyell Morton
facing 8 years behind bars because authorities can't find the humor in a blow-up doll prank.
After spotting the student on surveillance footage, officials at Morton's Indiana high school called in the state bomb squad.
All they found was a plastic doll, but he's still being charged with felony criminal mischief.
Clad in a hooded sweatshirt and latex gloves, Tyell Morton was caught on surveillance camera by Rushville High School officials carrying a package into a girls' bathroom, reports
UPI. A few minutes later, he left the restroom empty-handed.
The school then called the state bomb squad, which found a blow-up doll in one of the stalls.
The entire incident was part of a blow-up doll prank, which was Morton's version of the age-old senior prank.
Even though he has no criminal record and didn't intend any harm, prosecutors have charged him with felony criminal mischief, reports
AOL.
An odd name for a crime,
criminal mischief in Indiana occurs when someone "knowingly or intentionally causes another to suffer pecuniary loss...by an expression of intention to injure another person or to damage the[ir] property."
The crime is elevated from a misdemeanor to a felony when it involves large sums of monetary loss and occurs at a school. The bomb squad reportedly cost $8,000, notes
AOL.
Luckily for Tyell Morton, this statute requires proof of knowledge or intention, which is a difficult standard to meet. Because all he intended was a blow-up doll prank, he may be able to successfully argue that his actions were not criminal in nature.
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