http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ooftop_prank_1
Student Charged for Gorilla Mask Prank
Tue Feb 15, 6:26 PM ET Strange News - AP
OLEY, Pa. - A student apprehended on his high school roof in a gorilla mask was charged Tuesday with trespass and other crimes when his senior prank led to a school lockdown, officials said.
No one was injured and police found no weapons on suspect Matthew Pattison or inside Oley Valley High School in rural Berks County, state trooper Ray Albert said.
The 18-year-old Pattison — a National Merit semifinalist with no school disciplinary record — was charged with reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and criminal trespass.
He told police he donned a gorilla mask and gloves and climbed up to the cafeteria roof Tuesday morning in order to peer down into classroom windows, Oley Police Chief David A. White said in a statement.
The prank was foiled when school staff saw someone donning the mask in the parking lot and scaling a wall and called authorities, who sent officers, a state police helicopter and a bomb squad.
According to police, Pattison said he wore the disguise and covered his license plate in the school parking lot so he could not be identified on school surveillance cameras.
The school, which sits just off of Main Street in Oley, has about 660 students.
School board member Robert Moore said his daughter, a sophomore, called him on a cell phone Tuesday morning to say police were at the school and students were under a lockdown. She was not overly alarmed, Moore said.
"In today's day and age, that's a precautionary measure," Moore said.
No one answered Tuesday at a home believed to be Pattison's, and it was not immediately clear if he had been released.
Student Charged for Gorilla Mask Prank
Tue Feb 15, 6:26 PM ET Strange News - AP
OLEY, Pa. - A student apprehended on his high school roof in a gorilla mask was charged Tuesday with trespass and other crimes when his senior prank led to a school lockdown, officials said.
No one was injured and police found no weapons on suspect Matthew Pattison or inside Oley Valley High School in rural Berks County, state trooper Ray Albert said.
The 18-year-old Pattison — a National Merit semifinalist with no school disciplinary record — was charged with reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and criminal trespass.
He told police he donned a gorilla mask and gloves and climbed up to the cafeteria roof Tuesday morning in order to peer down into classroom windows, Oley Police Chief David A. White said in a statement.
The prank was foiled when school staff saw someone donning the mask in the parking lot and scaling a wall and called authorities, who sent officers, a state police helicopter and a bomb squad.
According to police, Pattison said he wore the disguise and covered his license plate in the school parking lot so he could not be identified on school surveillance cameras.
The school, which sits just off of Main Street in Oley, has about 660 students.
School board member Robert Moore said his daughter, a sophomore, called him on a cell phone Tuesday morning to say police were at the school and students were under a lockdown. She was not overly alarmed, Moore said.
"In today's day and age, that's a precautionary measure," Moore said.
No one answered Tuesday at a home believed to be Pattison's, and it was not immediately clear if he had been released.
