Prague resident reports fictitious fires, bomb scarces out of loneliness

Prague, Oct 31 (CTK) - A young Praguer who is suspected of anonymously reporting a few fictitious fires and a bomb planted at a railway station on the emergency phone line, has told the police that he did it because he felt lonely and wanted to talk to someone, police spokeswoman Eva Kropacova told CTK yesterday.

The 27-year-old man has been accused of alarm-mongering, for which he could face up to five years in jail.

In addition, he will probably have to pay tens of thousands of crowns for alerting rescuers unnecessarily.

After being arrested, the man told the police he had repeatedly called the emergency line in the state of drunkenness because he felt lonely.

"He said he had no friends and wanted to talk with someone this way at least. He usually navigated the firefighters towards the street he lives in, and then watched them from a window," Kropacova said.

The police caught the man after October 28 when he wrote to his friend, in an sms message, that he had set the latter's flat on fire. The police then found out that the same man reported a few other made-up fires on the emergency line in September and October.

The police have mapped four of such cases so far, but they do not rule out that their number might have been higher.