This is really quite unfair and I hope this poor 18 year old beats these extreme charges. The Indiana senior was taking his shot at a senior prank…involving a blow-up sex doll in the bathroom…and now is facing up to 8 years on felony criminal mischief. Hit the jump to find out why the charge is so serious for such a simple prank.
(AOL) – Playing with dolls could result in Tyell Morton spending the next eight years behind bars.
That’s where the 18-year-old Indiana high school senior could likely celebrate graduation after his attempt at a senior prank backfired, resulting in a bomb squad evacuation of Rushville High in Rushville last week.
Morton insists all he wanted do was put a blow-up doll in a girl’s bathroom as a joke. But when school officials saw surveillance video of a hooded figure wearing latex gloves entering a women’s bathroom carrying a suspicious package and leaving empty-handed, they tipped off authorities.
Investigators recovered the inflatable doll and arrested the teen, who has had no previous run-ins with the law. Morton has been charged with felony criminal mischief.
“It’s not right. It was a senior prank,” Morton told WTHR. “They’re blowing it out of proportion. I didn’t hurt anybody, I didn’t intend to embarrass anybody. What did I do wrong, you know?”
Robert Turner, Morton’s attorney, told 6News that the charges are overblown.
“It’s interesting that had he gone to school with a gun, there would’ve been a lesser charge. It would’ve been a Class D felony with up to three years,” he said.
But Rush County Prosecutor Phil Caviness told WTHR that the prank — which cost the school $8,000 — was no laughing matter.
“In this post-Columbine world, that’s what you get when these kinds of things happen,” he said.
