Court: Ohio man must pay $489,000 for false call
Source: AP
CINCINNATI (AP) — An Ohio man who was 19 when he made a false distress call that triggered a massive, 21-hour search on Lake Erie must pay $489,000 in restitution to the U.S. and Canadian agencies involved in the needless rescue effort, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
In a 2-1 ruling, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati found that a lower court properly ordered 21-year-old Danik Kumar of Sandusky to pay for all costs associated with the March 2012 search, launched after he reported seeing a fishing boat with four people on board sending up flares on Lake Erie as he was flying a small plane overhead.
About 70 personnel from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Canadian Coast Guard used three boats, a helicopter and a small plane before calling off the search.
A month later, Kumar told investigators that though he originally thought he saw a single flare go up, he never saw a boat, according to court records.
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/court-ohio-man-must-pay-489000-false-call
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