Restaurant Terrorized by Unknown Cook’s Package
Friday, November 26, 2004
Recently, a bomb scare in East Central Indiana turned out to be what is called a Geocache. If you’ve never heard of Geocaching, then maybe you have heard of what police call a “suspicious package”. Geocaching is nationally coordinated planned placement and replacement of suspicious packages by unknown persons. All you need is an internet connection and a GPS receiver, and you can become part of this nefarious “hobby”.
Inside the restaurant, things were not going well
But let’s get back to Indiana. David Cook, 37, was trying to teach his kids and a couple of children he was babysitting this dangerous game. He used his GPS receiver to guide himself and the children to the Tin Lizzy Restaurant. He found the mysterious package he was looking for under a small replica train outside the restaurant. It is unknown exactly what Cook did with the nefarious booty, but if our research is correct, while the children played, he took out an item, replaced another item, wrote his name in the log book and put back the package.
Inside the restaurant, things were not going well. The owners, who had given permission for the cache to be placed, were away and someone had just seen a man with 4 children putting a mysterious package under their toy train. And if there is one thing people know in East Central Indiana it is that men don’t babysit. What they didn’t know is that they were not dealing with the typical East Central Indiana denizen, but a computer consultant from Indianapolis. Not realizing they made a mistake, the 10 restaurant employees tried to figure out whether to call the police. They decided to take a vote, and after the final vote was counted (7-6) the police were called.
it is not yet known whether charges will be brought against Cook
While Cook had already fled the scene, the police acted quickly in evacuating three local businesses. When Cook was found, he offered to go back and open the cache for police, but his offer was denied. Perhaps police were worried that Cook was attempting an elaborate suicide. Finally, after nothing had happened in 3 hours, the police shot the box with a .50 caliber sniper rifle to make sure that it wasn’t going to explode. It did not as it was full of toys. While Cook has been released from jail, it is not yet known whether charges will be brought against Cook. "We're going to interview Cook, tally the costs and then meet with the prosecutor," said Blackford County Sheriff Kevin Mahan.
But we have to ask ourselves, what other kinds on dangerous things can be placed in these caches. It is well known that Saddam Hussein had caches of all sorts all over Iraq. These caches contained AK47 rifles, ammunition, grenades, and weapons of mass destruction. Some of theses caches, such as the ones with the weapons of mass destruction were so well hidden that they might never be found. Some people even believe that Saddam sent Syria the geocaching coordinates of the WMD caches, each with a little riddle or clue on how to find them, much like they do on www.geocaching.com, to Syria.
there are terrorists working within the United States
But what if terrorist found their way into the United States? Could they put this geocaching infrastructure to work for them? We conducted our own experiment. First, we found 10 popular geocaches, defined as goecaches visited more than once a week. Secondly, in each geocache we placed a purse with $400 and 2 rolls of Necco Wafers. The $400 is the street price of an AK-47 rifle. The Necco wafers symbolized 2 magazines of ammunition. We then returned to them one week later, and found that over half of the money was gone, along with 1 roll of the wafers. We can only assume from this that there are terrorists working within the United States, they know about GeoCaching and they either have all the ammunition that they need, or they dislike Necco Wafers.
While as a reporter, I have a responsibility to remain objective, as a citizen I think it is time to put an end to this dangerous hobby. We need legislation against these dangerous activities for our protection as American citizens. In the words of Sheriff Mohan, “People have to understand that I've been to three FBI and CIA briefings in the last two weeks, getting briefed on terrorists and terrorism. They need to find another game.”
Adrian Chevelle, arts & leisure.
