Blake Hall
Yesterday our minds exploded when we stumbled across a Camp Pendleton incident report that told the hilarious story of a Navy petty officer, a breathalyzer and a raccoon. Unfortunately, an official from Camp Pendleton confirmed that the entire report is a hoax. Shucks.
The Original Story
Someone posted this photo of a police report to Imgur last week that quickly gained notoriety for its far-fetched, wacky story.
According to the report, an unnamed Navy officer was heading home after a debaucherous night of drinking last Saturday when he realized he could not drive home without passing the breathalyzer test attached to his car. In a moment of drunken ingenuity, the officer found someone else to breathe into the machine for him–“a raccoon rummaging in a trash receptacle.” The gambit worked, and the sailor stowed the now-unconscious raccoon (getting the breath squeezed out of you is taxing) in the backseat.
The already nutty story spiraled out of control when the raccoon woke up while the sailor was still driving. Enraged and confused, the raccoon viciously bit and scratched the sailor, causing the man to crash his car into a fence and into a swimming pool.
The Hoax Exposed
This is the kind of absurd story that makes us want to say, “You can’t make this stuff up” when we recount it to our friends. Sadly, someone did make this stuff up. The San Diego Tribune confirmed the story was false when reporters contacted 1st. Lt. Savannah Frank of Camp Pendleton.
“I called police records, and while they were highly entertained, they confirmed (the story) is absolutely a hoax,” Frank said.
The report serial number was the main clue that it was fake because Camp Pendleton uses a different system to organize its arrest records. Another clue was the faded Illuminati logo and slogan ‘Always Watching Idiots’ behind the text, which remarkably isn’t found on official military documents. Fancy that.