Cops have now gotten to the bottom of the story, which Lafayette Police Commander Mark Battersby calls "a prank that was going around the school -- but the way it manifested itself on the day in question was not part of the prank. There was no intention of putting this package outside of the school and causing the stir it did."
But assorted Peak to Peak students did intend to make Kermit look worse for the wear. He was kidnapped, held hostage for an unknown period of time, and marked with red Sharpie ink to make it look as if he'd been assaulted.
Here's how Battersby tells it:
"The kids had 'kidnapped' this Kermit the Frog doll from a teacher earlier in the year. How much earlier, I don't know, but they had been passing this doll back and forth amongst themselves. And someone had used a red Sharpie marker on the doll to simulate blood, which is what kind of concerned the initial person who saw it -- and what concerned us when we first saw it, too."
Eventually, "one of the kids got tired of having it in his car," Battersby continues. "So he called another one of the kids and told him to get it out of the car and to leave it for one of the other kids to come pick up. And basically what happened was, it was taken out of the car and set on the ground -- but the kid who was supposed to get it didn't. So it sat there in an empty parking lot all night, I imagine, and then someone from the school saw it the next morning. But it wasn't put out there to cause a problem. It was inadvertently left out."
According to Battersby, the students involved didn't come forward until "after the conclusion of our part of the event." As a result, "we didn't have all the information while we were out there, and that's unfortunate, because it might have short-circuited what we were going through. But fortunately, there wasn't anything to it."
No criminal charges will be filed against the students, although that doesn't preclude disciplinary action by the school. And the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Stuffed Animals may want to weigh in as well.
