When 18-year-old Mark Welch awoke from an "odd" dream, he felt he had to tell someone about it. In fact, he was eventually compelled to call 911, after he said his parents didn't believe him when he told them the events in his dream were really happening.
A Volusia County Sheriff's Office call-taker briefly tried to make sense of the story before dispatching a deputy to the scene, but was unsuccessful:
Call-Taker: "What's happening?"
Welch: "Everything that happened today is actually in my dream, and I want to prove it to everybody."
Call-Taker: "What did you dream about that's happening?"
Welch: "It's all on paper. I wrote it down."
According to the Volusia County Sheriff's Office, a deputy was dispatched to Welch's house near Orange City and determined that the teen was a little confused from smoking "K2," or synthetic marijuana. Deputies said Welch admitted to smoking the substance, but wasn't in need of any medical attention at the time.
The deputy counseled Welch not to call 911 again unless he had a genuine emergency, and his parents even hid the phone in an effort to prevent Welch from calling again. Unfortunately, Welch didn't heed the warning. About 40 minutes after the first call, Welch went to a neighbor's house and called 911 again, saying he was still trying to prove something to his family about his dream.
"The officer told me not to call back," said Welch. "And he said if I called back, then ya'll were going to take me to court. So I'm calling back."
The call-taker asked Welch if he wanted to go to jail. "I have to prove something to my family," he responded. "So can you send an officer back?" When asked if there was an emergency, Welch admitted there wasn't.
The call-taker complied with Welch's request and dispatched a deputy to his house -- the same deputy who had responded to the first call. Welch was then promptly arrested for misuse of the 911 system, a first-degree misdemeanor, and booked into the Volusia County Branch Jail in Daytona Beach on $500 bond.
