The bogus distress call left on the telephone answering machine of a Slippery Rock Borough man last week has consumed many man-hours of valuable police time and probably will consume many more before the investigation is completed.

Fortunately, no police officer was injured - or killed - while responding to the incident, which purportedly involved a frantic woman who had been shot and who was in danger of being shot again.

To the person responsible for the prank, the call might have seemed like harmless fun, but the caller is in the process of learning otherwise. Police were working toward filing charges.

If charges are filed, the prank could end up being more of a nightmare than the caller could ever have imagined, if it has not already become that.

The incident also should serve as an eye-opener for anyone with a penchant for using the telephone for something other than proper purposes.

The caller in this incident was tracked down because investigators obtained a search warrant to review Sprint's records of calls made to the man's telephone. The caller obviously wasn't aware that there was such a tracking option, or at least didn't think authorities would go to such lengths to trace the call.

Technology has advanced beyond the old television police scenario, where the recipient of threatening or ransom calls was required to keep the caller on the line in order to allow the call to be traced.

The man to whose telephone the call was made last week did not have caller identification.

The nature of the somewhat garbled 90-second call made it necessary for the police to regard it seriously. The sound of gunshots could be heard as the purported shooting victim hysterically screamed her plight.

"I'm out in the yard," screamed the woman. "He has a gun. He's coming back. . . .I don't want him to come back. He already shot me once; he could do it again."

The sound of a gunshot followed with the screams of the woman.

Two or three additional shots are reportedly heard, as well as more screams from the woman.

Some people choose to have their fun in unusual ways, but when fun takes a turn requiring police intervention, those involved might have tarnished their reputations in a way that could last the rest of their lives.

How can a person feel comfortable about the prospect of telling a future job interviewer about having been arrested for leaving phony distress messages on another person's phone?

Trouble is, when people get involved in something like the incident in question, they fail to ponder that kind of bigger picture and how it might affect others' lives - in this case, the investigators'.

For that reason, authorities shouldn't bend over backwards to be lenient to the person - or persons - involved in this case.

- J.R.K.