Sam Amico
A 19-year-old suspect admitted to calling in a threat to a Ford Assembly Plant in Kansas City, but he told the court he didn’t do it by choice.
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Instead, Zachariah A. Peterson claimed he was “forced” to make the call that caused a six-hour search of the facility and an evacuation of 2,200 employees. In fact, Ford had to cancel the overnight shift at the plant.
Peterson’s family said another Ford employee pressured him to call in the threat, so he did. Now, he is in jail on $150,000 bond.
“I don’t think he would have done this if he would have known the consequences,” his sister said, via FOX4. “I think he thought it was a big joke but that’s not something that you joke about. And I don’t think he … I just don’t think he thought about it. He didn’t think it through. He didn’t think how serious it is.”
Peterson also suffers from ADHD, his grandmother added.
“He’s ADH[D] and he has a lot of problems, so they pressured him into it,” she told FOX4. “And his friend wanted off work, which is very juvenile for those children.”
His sister again strongly suggested that Peterson wasn’t intending to shut down the entire plant and cause such a massive scare.
“I don’t think he meant for it to go this far,” she said. “He was just trying to get his friend out of work, which his friend should have just called in, just said ‘Hey, I’m not coming,’ because his friend, if he gets fired, that’s on him. But now my brother is in jail, going to be in prison maybe, and all of his friends are going to be out here laughing free because they didn’t.”
Police responded to the Ford Assembly Plant at about 5:30 p.m. local time, shortly after a caller said he was armed with explosives, a rifle and a handgun and was barricaded in the second-floor bathroom. Six hours later, authorities determined there was no such person in the building.
While police searched the plant, investigators worked to locate the caller.
Peterson faces up to seven years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 if convicted.
