Next Time Just Fake a Cough

By Sam Bakken in News on Jul 16, 2005 1:40AM

Police say one of the CTA's own phoned in the bomb threat that closed the Brown Line for an hour on Sunday. A criminal complaint filed in federal court alleges that at 8:22 a.m. Sunday, Bilal Steward, 26, called 911 from a pay phone at the Kimball stop saying, "Kimball Terminal 12 minutes will explode." Steward worked as a train operator and the CTA put him on probation in April for absenteeism and safety violations. Two managers at the Kimball stop identified the voice on the 911 tape as Steward's. Steward denies that he made the call.

If it was Steward, we bet he wanted to go to a Marcel Proust birthday celebration, but his bosses wouldn't let him out of work. We once called our manager at Dairy Queen and told him we couldn't come in because we'd sprained our ankle (we actually wanted to go to a music festival). He told us to come in anyway so we frantically called friends to find out who had an ankle wrap and a pair of crutches we could use. We eventually wrangled up the props and went to work. Our manager didn't say anything to us about faking it so we must have put on a convincing performance.

We're big fans of creative getting-out-of-work excuses, but a bomb threat seems a bit much.