It was both dramatic and artistic – however it was also the most over-the-top solutions ever invented for avoiding that well-known childhood nightmare, when parents are called in to chat to their teachers.
Early on Monday afternoon the unnamed 11-year-old son of a Spanish police officer stationed inside the north-western town of Xinzo de Limia sent a text message from his cellular phone to inform his father he were kidnapped.
When his father phoned back, the boy confirmed the worst. He were snatched off the road as he was putting out the garbage, he said, and was locked within the boot of a car. He had no idea where his kidnappers were taking him, but knew that the auto he was in was a blue Seat.
The worried father told his commanders and, because the news was relayed around civil guard barracks around the province of Ourense, his colleagues hurriedly establish roadblocks. A nationwide alert was released in case the vehicle had left the province.
Police in neighbouring Portugal were also informed amid worries that the boy’s kidnappers may need fled around the border.
Local newspapers flashed the inside track on their websites and ran photographs of heavily armed police manning roadblocks.
It was only two hours later that the boy’s father noticed the keys to a spare flat owned by the family were missing.
The child was soon discovered there and reportedly explained that he have been terrified by the chance of his parents going to faculty to talk to his teachers.
“The civil guard attributed the false alarm to a childish ‘prank’ that had something to do with the boy’s situation in school,” the local Faro de Vigo newspaper reported.
“The child’s poor school scores in recent weeks seem to explain a kind of behaviour that no person in Xinzo could understand,” said the Voz de Galicia newspaper. “He and his parents were attributable to meet his class tutor that afternoon.”
They failed to report on whether that meeting had now been cancelled – or merely delayed.
