Arnthia Willis Wichita Kansas woman arrested in April Fools Day prank after the mother told her daughter she was shot sending vast police units to her home.
A Wichita, Kansas woman who told her daughter she had been shot as an April Fools’ Day joke has been arrested after ‘multiple police units’ responded to her home.
Arnthia Willis, 58, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of unlawful request for emergency service assistance, Wichita police said.
Willis’ daughter notified 911 after her mother called and said she had been shot and then hung up, The Wichita Eagle reported.
‘Multiple police units, probably between 15-20 officers from the Wichita Police Department as well as fire department and EMS responded to the scene,’ Wichita police Lt. Ronald Hunt said.
Police had blocked streets and surrounded the home in northeast Wichita.
April Fool’s Day joke can be fun but sometimes not so fun….
When no one responded, officers wearing shields and with guns drawn broke down the door, Hunt said.
Hunt said the mother was at work and called her daughter as a prank.
Her daughter told kake.com: ‘I got a call from my mom and she was like “he shot me, he shot me”. I was doing like 100 on the highway.
‘I’m still shook. They take it seriously and this is on you mom.’
Police radio shows one officer tells his colleagues: ‘She’s fine, she said it was an April Fools’ joke.
Willis was arrested in Derby, a Wichita suburb.
‘April Fools´ can be a good, funny little joke in some circumstances’ but when it leads to a police response ‘it´s not funny any more,’ he said.
The incident comes as another woman also faced the wrath of authorities, when Pamela Sisco of New Carlisle, Ohio, texted her sister on April Fool’s Day to say she was under active siege by a gunman at her place of work.
The incident led to a barrage of police units swarming at the Springfield manufacturing plant where she worked after the woman’s concerned sibling notified authorities. The sister has since been charged with inducing panic and disrupting public services.
