Nursery teacher who sparked major six-hour search with hoax 999 call fined

A nursery school teacher who sparked a major search of a Scottish loch in freezing conditions for an overturned kayak by making a hoax 999 call has avoided jail and been fined instead.

Clair Frost, 35, denied sounding the false alarm from a landline at Killin Nursery School, Perthshire, but the caller’s “distinctive, higher-pitched, childlike” tones were identified as hers by two colleagues and a police officer who had all known her for years.

Witnesses, who listened to a recording of the emergency call, also pointed out that the caller said the Scottish word loch as “lock” – as Frost was known to mispronounce it.

Stirling Sheriff Court heard that the call was received by Scottish Fire and Rescue at 1.15 pm on January 17, 2024.

The caller said they thought they could see an upside down kayak at the “head of the loch” at Loch Tay.

Asked if they could see anybody in the water, the caller replied: “I can’t see that far enough.”

Police officers from as far as Stirling were sent to the scene, travelling on wintry roads, sometimes through slush, together with a fire engine, an ambulance and paramedic.

A helicopter was scrambled, while police checked lay-bys near the loch for vehicles from which a kayak could have been launched, as well as B&Bs and campsites in the area. A joint emergency services meeting point was set up in the Killin Hotel, which also provided hot drinks.

The Scottish Fire Service was considering putting a boat out to search the “vast” and partially ice-covered loch – an operation which the court heard would have entailed its own risks – when officers began to suspect a hoax.

The search was stood down after six hours.

The call was traced to a fixed phone in a nappy-changing room at the Stirling Council-run nursery.

Initially police thought a child at the facility – which caters for newborns to five-year-olds and doesn’t actually have a view of the loch at all – might have been responsible.

Village police constable Iona Frickleton even sat down with the children and asked if any of them had used the phone that day. One boy put up his hand and said he had.

PC Frickleton said: “His parents attended and it was established he had been playing with a toy phone.”

Giving evidence, PC Frickleton said she was then able to listen to a recording of the call, and was “100%” sure the voice was that of Frost, whom she had known for eight years.

A nappy-changing log identified that Frost had been in the relevant room at the time the call was made, and after two other members of staff at the nursery also identified her voice, she was arrested.

At Falkirk Police Station, Frost conceded that her husband was a retained firefighter and had been called out as part of the search, but denied any financial difficulty, and denied he would have derived any financial benefit from the callout.

After police played the recording to her, Frost conceded, with tears in her eyes: “It does sound like me, I can’t say it doesn’t. But it’s not me.”

The mother-of-two wept in the dock as she appeared for sentence at Stirling Sheriff Court on Wednesday, having been found guilty after a summary trial in August of making the false call to emergency services – a contravention of the 2005 Fire (Scotland) Act.

Solicitor Virgil Crawford, defending, said Frost, a first offender, still maintained her innocence, but accepted she had been convicted.

He said she now suffered from anxiety and was receiving sick pay from her work.

Sheriff Clair McLachlan, who had originally warned Frost she could be jailed, said that she had not appreciated that Act laid down the maximum prison term that could be imposed as three months.

The sheriff said a jail term would therefore be “of limited effect”.

Fining Frost £1,040, she told her: “This was an offence that very significant consequences, both in terms of the public purse and in terms of public safety.

“It’s a serious matter, and the fine must reflect that.”

Detective constable Gavin Dingwall, who headed the police interview of Frost, said he was “stumped” as to why Frost had committed the offence.

A spokesman for Stirling Council said: “We note the decision of the court and won’t be providing any further comment at this time.”