Park County Sheriff’s Dispatch Receives Dangerous Prank Call

A prank call hasn’t left anyone laughing at the Park County Sheriff’s Office.

This Wednesday, August 5^th, a caller – who claimed to be visiting from Detroit and was staying at the Wapiti Campground on the North Fork – called into the Park County Sheriff’s Office just before midnight, claiming he witnessed a plane crash. The caller described a twin-engine plane with an active engine fire, flying low enough that he could see people falling from the plane. The caller then told the dispatcher and listening deputy that he was taking his Jeep out to reach the scene of the crash, navigating by glow stick, when he hit a tree and was ejected from his vehicle. After 28 minutes on the phone, the caller disconnected.

Just as with any call to the Sheriff’s Office dispatch, resources and personnel were immediately mobilized to respond – Park County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue, a Cody Regional Health Ambulance and two Park County Sheriff’s Deputies were all dispatched. That’s when things started becoming clear. For one, the caller wouldn’t give a specific location for the crash. Resources allocated to determining the point of origin from the call determined it hadn’t come from anywhere on the Northfork – it came from Florida. Furthermore, no Emergency Locator Transmitters were activated in our area. At 1:53 A.M. the call was finally canceled and ruled to be a prank.

As you can imagine, nobody’s laughing at this prank call. All calls are taken seriously, and people and resources were scrambled to get out to the scene and save lives. Calls like this are not only thoroughly irresponsible, they’re dangerous. If there were a real situation and real lives in danger needing these resources, it would’ve diluted the responding agencies’ response.

There’s no word on if the caller has been identified or if they will face charges for their prank.