ST. CHARLES, Ill. (CBS) ― It’s illegal to yell fire in a crowded theater. And it turns out, pulling a fire alarm in a crowded bar can get you in a lot of trouble, too. It happened at an Irish pub in St. Charles over the weekend. As CBS 2′s Pamela Jones reports, now a 25-year-old faces a felony charge.
You might expect to find Irish whiskey, Irish beer and a love for Irish music in an Irish pub. But you certainly wouldn’t expect a fire alarm to go off.
“I was shocked. Totally shocked,” said Erin Breslin, manager of McNally’s Irish Pub in St. Charles.
Breslin says a lot of people were shocked at McNally’s, 201 E. Main Street, on Sunday. Just after 7 p.m., she says a patron flipped the switch on the fire alarm; all because she and a couple of guys she was with didn’t like the music.
“These three people came in complaining that their ears were bleeding and weren’t enjoying the traditional music,” Breslin said.
Police say 25-year-old Shona Lukes pulled the alarm. The bar’s manager says she and two men then ran out the back door.
Police say witnesses identified Lukes at a bar around the corner. They arrested her for giving a false alarm. She is being held on $15,000 bond.
With a packed bar, people at McNally’s say their fear was the prank could have led to real danger.
“There were families in here and there was young children, too, enjoying the music and Irish step-dancing,” Breslin said. “They were scared and alarmed by what was going on.”
The manager at McNally’s said the three people had only been at the bar for about 45 minutes when the alarm went off.
McNally’s is moving locations soon. And talking about this kind of trouble is not how they wanted to spend their last week at their current location.
Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.