I’ve been following the story of the Delmar Kid Chaser. If you had not been following this one, it made the local news a few days ago. Four teenagers raised a ruckus outside a local families home around 10pm on Saturday night. They banged on the back door and then rang the front door bell. The home owner chased the boys and caught one of them. He brought the 14 year old into his home and then called the police.
The parents of the boy were asked by the police if they wanted to press charges against the homeowner, which they did. The boy suffered some bumps and scrapes when he was caught, so the homeowner has been charged with endangering the welfare of a child and harassment.
That sounds a bit extreme to me. If the boys had just run the doorbell and ran away, like typical teenage morons, nothing else would have happened. The pounding on the back door, that changes things a bit. That’s not normal “Ding-Dong-Ditches” behavior. Two small children and the homeowner’s wife were sleeping upstairs when this happened. The teenagers took the prank one step too far.
When you hear someone pounding on your back door at 10pm, your Homeland Security Advisory System goes from green to orange in about 2 heart beats. I can see why the homeowner gave chase. A dumb idea, but I can see where his motivation came from.
The story has had a lot of play on the Times Union web site. The father of the arrested boy has a blog on the site and was formerly the anonymous blogger behind the Albany Eye. He has a fair amount of notoriety attached to his name, based on his blog postings. Except in this case, he’s being quiet the actions of his son and the consequences, except for being interviewed by the paper that runs his blog.
In the words of the boy’s father (as reported by the Times Union) of the prankster: “I’m very unhappy with my son’s behavior Saturday night. I don’t condone his actions under any circumstances and we’ll deal with this in the harshest possible way.”
I guess the “harshest possible way” also includes the homeowner that his son terrorized that night. He is facing a misdemeanor charge and now has to go to court. The boys? Too young to be prosecuted, they walk away from this. Drop the charges, this is ridiculous.