Idiots with Fake AK-47 Cause Panic at French School

Showing up at a school with a very realistic toy AK-47 is a terrible idea at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. Still, two masked assholes allegedly thought it was a funny idea to get themselves a plastic Kalashnikov and take it to a school in southwestern France, just weeks after that country experienced a devastating terrorist attack at the hands of gunmen carrying Kalashnikovs. The fact that they thought that was a funny idea makes them idiots, and the fact that neither of them was injured in the ensuing police response sounds like a stroke of luck for which they should be extremely grateful.

According to The Local, two women in their early 20s wore masks and carried a fake AK-47 to a school in Andernos-les-Bain, in Aquitaine, France, yesterday afternoon. The perpetrators reportedly wandered around campus and asked the students for cigarettes, while wearing masks and openly carrying what looked exactly like an AK-47.

The school’s terrified students called the authorities, and several dozen police officers and a helicopter were immediately dispatched to the scene. Terrorists with AK-47s killed over 130 people in Paris just three weeks ago! Obviously news of anyone approaching a school with an AK-47 in France is going to prompt an strong, fast response. The women were nowhere to be seen by the time the police arrived.

News reports indicate that 850 students were locked in their classrooms for four hours while police swept the area. Local parents knew all this was going on, too, so they were all in a panic somewhere, knowing their children were confined at school hiding from masked people with guns.

Police did eventually find the women. They’d just gone back to one of their houses and were hanging out with their idiotic fake gun.

The two were immediately arrested, and police say they are investigating the women’s “reckless behavior.” The Local says that local papers in the area say that the stunt was just a really, hugely stupid prank, and if that’s true I hope the police charge them with aggravated assholery, or something similar.

Unfortunately, making them hide in a locked room for four hours thinking someone is coming to kill them is probably not an available punishment, because it would really fit this particular crime.

(Photo: MXM1970/iStockPhoto/Getty Images)