A PRANKSTER WHO OBVIOUSLY KNEW HOW to tease along the desk clerk at a York, Nebraska, hotel, led her and all the guests along a merry path of destruction recently.
It all started at the Hampton Inn on W. David Drive when the fire alarm activated in the middle of the night. When all the guests assembled in the lobby to find out what was going on and what to do next, the desk clerk told them that it was a false alarm and that the (unbearably loud) noise would stop soon.
The York, Nebraska Hampton Inn
The York News-Times picks up the story:
As the guests waited, more and more time passed, with the alarm blaring in their ears. “Then, the front desk clerk received a phone call from someone who said they were from the alarm service,” the woman said. “Apparently, they told the clerk to not call the fire department because it would result in a $20,000 fine for false reporting.”
That statement, while not true, was allegedly taken seriously by the clerk. The woman said the clerk was allegedly told by the persons on the other end of the line that she needed to pull a lever down on the alarm, in order to deactivate it — but that didn’t work.
“Then, they told her to go to a specific website on the computer and they’d coach her through deactivating the system,” said the guest, who remained anonymous throughout the conversation. “When she went to the website, it was actually pornographic in nature.”
Most people would have caught on by now. But not Debbie the Desk Clerk. The prankster had her hooked and now he started to reel her in.
The extreme noise of the alarm was obviously wearing on the guests as it continued to blare throughout the facility.“At that point, the people on the phone said the only way to stop the alarm was to break out the front window of the hotel,” the woman said. “There was a man staying at the hotel who had a semi tractor in the parking lot and they talked him into slowly driving his vehicle into the building, in order to break the window.”York Police Chief Don Klug confirmed that a truck was used in order to break the front window of the hotel. However it didn’t shut the alarm off.“There was glass everywhere,” the female guest said. “It was the most bizarre situation I’ve ever been in.” She said that at that point, one of the guests decided the whole thing was a hoax and they promptly called the fire department for assistance in turning off the alarm.
