Man wanted to be with a woman, and dialed 911 to get cop out of his way

James Rush was so smitten with a woman he met last week in a bar in Naperville, Illinois that he called in a phony 911 report of gunfire.

Rush now faces trial on a charge of placing a false 911 call. The police report indicated he did so in the hope officers who were checking on the welfare of a drunken woman would race off to investigate the "gunshots," giving Rush the opportunity to take the woman home.

The incident began shortly before 2 a.m. Thursday, when a patrol officer went to investigate a sport utility vehicle that had stopped in the middle of LaSalle Avenue just east of Route 59 and not far from Breaktime Billiards, a sports bar and grill.

A woman and a man were standing on the pavement next to the SUV and walked away as the officer approached them. The officer quickly caught up with the pair outside a nearby automotive body shop.

The woman was leaning against a wall and the man, later identified as Rush, "was next to her with his arms around her," according to the report. Both appeared to have been drinking, and Rush insisted they were together and would be returning to the bar.

A female employee of the bar approached the officer as Rush and the woman were walking away. The employee said the woman had come to the bar with another man who had since left the premises, and the now-drunken woman "had been going from guy to guy in the bar."

The officer said he watched as the woman began running through a parking lot with Rush in pursuit. "They got to the grassy area along Route 59, and the female was on the ground and the male was down next to her," the officer wrote in the report.

After racing to the scene, the officer offered to call a taxicab for the woman, "and she said to please do so (as) she wanted to go home," the report indicated. She added she did not know Rush and had just met him that evening.

Rush "said he would take her home, and I told him to leave and I would get her home in a cab," the officer wrote. Rush then began walking toward an apartment complex where he lives.

Another bar employee then offered to drive the woman to her home. The two left soon after.

A few minutes later, a police emergency radio dispatcher directed the officer and another patrolman to the intersection of North Aurora Road and Route 59, following a 911 call of six gunshots having been fired there.

Dispatchers tried seven times to reconnect with the 911 caller on his wireless telephone, the report indicated. Police soon determined the phone belonged to Rush.

The officers caught up with Rush, who denied placing the call, even as "the phone in the man's pocket started ringing" with yet another call from the dispatchers, the report stated.

"I again asked him why he called 911, and this time he told me he called in the 911 call to get me out of the area, so he could go back and pick up the girl before the cab came," the officer wrote in the report.(info from the Naperville Sun)