A prankster’s calls to military families with news that their loved ones have been killed in Afghanistan are being castigated as “insensitive, amoral and disgusting.”
The Canadian military is investigating.
A spokesman for Quebec’s CFB Valcartier says a prankster phoned several families, including one soldier’s wife to say her husband had been killed by a bomb on the battlefield.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay called such crank calls “despicable.”
“Military personnel should not be needlessly worried about their families when they are fighting for our country in far away lands,” MacKay said Wednesday in a statement.
“Military families, who also make incredible sacrifices in Canada’s name, should never be the target of such an insensitive, amoral and disgusting act.”
Lt. Dennis Noel of CFB Valcartier said one woman answered the call in the middle of the night last week.
“She received a prank call saying that her husband was killed in Afghanistan by an IED (improvised explosive device),” he said ….
This and an earlier story from Postmedia News refer to these acts as “pranks”, while QMI/Sun Media uses terms like “death prankster” and “heartless pranksters” (CBC.ca refers to “crank calls”). Here’s various definitions of “prank”:
