Thursday, February 7, 2013

No Time

Submitted for your approval...  18 year old Torre Scrimalli of Scranton.  He's the young man who admitted to Tweeting a bomb threat against Mid Valley and Holy Cross high schools Monday evening.

Scrimalli is in big trouble.  BIG TROUBLE!

Mid Valley, where a basketball game was in progress, was evacuated and searched.  Holy Cross was searched.  It caused a lot of anxiety and expense.

As he surrendered to authorities, Scrimalli said “I learned a good lesson, like, nothing on the internet’s safe, it’s there for good.”

Are you kidding me?  Scrimalli is 18.  He's never known a world without the internet.  If it took the young man this long to learn that once you hit "enter," you can't call it back, something is seriously wrong.  That should be the first lesson when you take the computer out of the box at home, and when you step in to the computer lab at school.  A computer isn't a pencil.  It has no eraser.

And then, there is the timing.  Society is hyper sensitive to violence after the Newtown shootings.  I'm sure Scrimalli wasn't going to blow up the schools.  This was just a bad, bad, bad joke.  It was never a good time to pull such a prank, especially now.

Law enforcement will try to make an example out of Torre Scrimalli, to discourage others from trying similar stunts.  This is one case where being a pioneer is not a good thing.

Torre Scrimalli faces 14 years in prison.  I'd be very surprised if he sees a day in jail.  A sharp lawyer will plea bargain this down to something both sides can live with.

The point has been made, and the damage has been done.