A 4-year-old boy from northern Italy unknowingly called the 112 emergency number and the ambulance 70 times, blocking the telephone exchanges. The culprit was a smartwatch he had at kindergarten. And it was there that the Carabinieri appeared, looking for the author of the silent calls.
The unusual incident reported by the local Italian press occurred in the town of Oderzo in the province of Treviso in the Veneto region.
In a short time, the Carabinieri officer on duty received 40 silent calls to 112. Someone called the local emergency services 30 times. There was no one on the other end, but children's voices could be heard in the background, the daily La Tribuna di Treviso reported.
The first thought of the employees who received these calls was that they were hoaxes. When the series continued and the switchboards were practically blocked, an alarm was raised to open the lines to those who really needed help.
It was quickly realized that the silent calls were not a thoughtless joke, but that someone had been dialing those numbers unknowingly. The search for the person who had called began. The location was located, and that was what surprised the carabinieri the most, because the trail led them to the kindergarten.
Even greater surprise was caused by a patrol of gendarmes who entered one of the rooms. At first, they suspected that one of the children had a mobile phone with him, which he was playing with. However, it turned out that the calls were initiated from the four-year-old's smartwatch. The boy had received it from his parents and was wearing it on his wrist.
While playing with it and pressing various functions, he also enabled calls, only to the emergency services, because those were the only ones possible.
The watch was taken from the child and then given to the child's parents who came to collect it. They were not punished because of the chaos their son caused.
From Rome Sylwia Wysocka(PAP)
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