The teenager has been sentenced to 6 months in a young offenders institution after making the hoax call.
18-year-old Luke Brown made the call to Norfolk police on March 6, where he describes a ‘bomb letter’ he claimed to have received.
Luke specified the location of the non-existent bomb, telling 999 operators that it was in the food court at Castle Mall shopping centre.
Eleven police showed up to the shopping centre with sniffer dogs following the phone call, whilst the building was evacuated. The cost of the operation is reportedly in the region of four-figures.
Superintendent Neil Baily said: ‘It’s astonishing to think of the stupidity of someone who would make a hoax call about a bomb in a busy shopping centre just to get his brother off work early.’
‘As with any report to the police, our priority is the safety of the public and we have to treat these incidents seriously from the outset, as we did in this case by sending officers, including a dog unit, to the scene.’
‘Hoax calls are not victimless crimes; they can create fear and disruption to the community and also require a significant amount of resource from emergency services.’