Man Threatens Civilians with TV Remote

I absolutely love the creativity of a drunken man. Geoffrey Fryatt's threat to blow up half a city forced police to announce a state of emergency at this Australian golf resort.

Geoffrey Fryatt, a 57-year-old inhabitant of the Fairways Golf and Lifestyle Retreat in Brisbane was arrested by police after horrifying neighbors with a knife and threatening to detonate a store of chemicals.

"One push of the button will blow up half of Brisbane," Fryatt shouted. Fryatt claimed he had chemicals inside the property and knew how to make a bomb, and he also gloated that he had been SAS-trained.

The police were call in hopes they could stop the man before he could cause serious damage to their beautiful city. Luckily the police came in time and began to fire rubber bullets. They got a hold of the detonator, but did they find any deadly chemicals? No, because the detonator was actually Fryatt's television remote. How clever.

Fryatt's lawyer, Martin Van der Walt, had said that Fryatt lost control and began drinking away his woes after losing around $300,000 in life savings by his finance broker in an investment.

"People are genuinely scared of sudden explosions," the judge said after sentencing Fryatt to a year's probation. "Frightening members of the public with threats of bombs and bomb hoaxes has a much greater impact than it once did," she added.

Fryatt accepted his probation, but said he was concerned it could interrupt his plans to travel to other countries to do humanitarian work, says the Brisbane Times.

"Let's get you right before we send you off to a third world country," the judge said.