A prank caller tricked workers at a Minnesota Burger King into smashing the windows of the restaurant to keep it from exploding, police said Saturday, mirroring similar deceptions at Burger Kings and other fast-food restaurants in other states in recent months.
Police said employees at the restaurant in the Minneapolis suburb of Coon Rapids got the call Friday night from someone claiming to be with the fire department. The caller said the restaurant could explode, so they needed to relieve the pressure. The manager and other employees believed the caller and smashed all the windows on the ground floor.
"Officers arrived and found that the manager and employees of the Burger King were smashing out the windows," Sgt. Rick Boone told the Star Tribune.
Boone said there was no immediate cost estimate for the damage. The restaurant was boarded up Saturday, and investigators were trying to identify the caller."The manager explained they'd received a phone call from a male who identified himself as a fireman who said there were dangerous levels of gas in the building and they had to break out all the windows to keep the building from blowing up."
Someone placed a similar call to a Burger King in Shawnee, Oklahoma, on Thursday night, claiming there were high levels of carbon monoxide in the building. KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City reported that the window damage there was estimated at $10,000.
"It is a little upsetting that they would try to give the fire department a black eye," Thomas Larman, of the Shawnee Fire Department, told the station. "We would never do anything like that. We're here to serve the public, protect the public."
A similar call to Burger King in Morro Bay, California, about a purported gas leak in early February resulted in $35,000 in damage. Not only did employees smash the windows, but a manager went as far as ramming his car into building. And police in Tucson, Arizona, say several similar prank calls were placed to Jack in the Box restaurants there in early February, fooling workers at one store. A similar incident happened at a Wendy's in Phoenix in late January.
Fast food workers across America were famously tricked into running strip searches on staff in 2004 by a serial caller who pretended to be from the police.
The caller would tell the store manager he was from the local police department and that a worker or customer had been caught stealing. He would then force the manager to conduct a strip search and other degrading activities which went as far as performing oral sex.
Some of the girls involved were as young as 14.
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