“Fresh Prince” Theme Causes School Lock Down in Pennsylvania

Here’s something you don’t hear every day. Earlier this week, an entire county’s worth of schools was forced to be put on lockdown because of a misheard lyric from the theme song of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

According to The Beaver County Times, 19-year-old Travis Clawson was scheduled to have an appointment with his optometrist, but he didn’t pick up the phone when they were checking on his arrival. The receptionist believed his greeting to callers—which sampled a line from the DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince collabo—said “shooting some people” or in other words, mistakenly taken as a threat. The actual line from the song is “chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool/ shooting some b-ball outside of the school.”

The receptionist instantly was concerned and called Sewickley police, which eventually made it to Ambridge school officials. This prompted schools to engage in a countywide lockdown since they didn’t know where Clawson was at the time. Later on in the day, police authorities found him in the guidance office of his school where he was taken into custody.

As the Times points out: "James Mann, acting police chief in Ambridge, said Clawson was interviewed by police and he told them he meant no harm and that his message was just him imitating Will Smith’s rap intro to the show that ran on NBC from 1990-96 and now is rerun on ABC Family. All six seasons also are out on DVD. District Attorney Anthony Berosh said it was determined after listening to the message closely that it did follow the Quincy Jones-penned song and Clawson was released."

The moral of the story? This proves that parents are getting more far removed in pop culture references than ever before. Maybe next time an incident like this happens, they’ll be a little bit more hip to Will Smith’s rap intro.

[via SPIN]