Man says hot peppers prompted him to phone in Amtrak bomb threat

[matcom]

<snip>

It was hot peppers - and the allergic reaction they caused - that made Michael Conwill's blood boil and prompted the bomb threats he made against an Amtrak train last month.

"I was just mad," Conwill told U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb on Tuesday. "I was upset. I wasn't thinking."

The 35-year-old fish processor from Anchorage, Alaska, pleaded guilty to phoning the bomb threats to sheriff's dispatchers in Juneau and Sauk counties as the train rolled through Wisconsin on July 6.

Conwill said he made the calls, in which he claimed a bomb was aboard the train, because he was angry at Amtrak for an allergic reaction he had to some hot peppers that were in food served to him aboard the train he boarded in Seattle.

His allergic reaction to the peppers, Conwill said, caused him to be briefly hospitalized in Minot, N.D. He said he got on the next Chicago-bound train, not realizing it was a different train on the same route, and made the threats out of anger.

Conwill will be sentenced Nov. 2. Assistant U.S. Attorney Grant Johnson said he could be required to pay restitution to Amtrak of about $15,000.

http://www.madison.com/wsj/mad/local/index.php?ntid=8893&ntpid=5

[iconoclastic cat]

1. Yep, those can be hell on exit.

That could send anyone over the edge.

[Infomaniac]

2. Huh?

Huh? I've heard hot peppers can affect some people, but nobody ever mentioned it affected the area of the brain that controls judgment. Yikes. That's the lamest dog-ate-my-homework excuse I've heard in a long time.

[iconoclastic cat]

4. It's those Guatemalan Insanity Peppers!

[sangh0]

3. I onced phoned in phony orders to a delicatessen

because they put shredded green peppers in their cole slaw. What kind of person does such a thing?

[Bunny]

5. I hate green peppers, so I would say that anyone who puts them

in anything, especially coleslaw, should be shot at once!