Asking folks in an Internet chat room to help crash his high school’s computer was a joke to one student.
School officials and Canton City Prosecutor Frank Forchione didn’t think it was funny.
On Wednesday morning, Forchione filed a felony criminal charge of disrupting public services against Michael W. Stone, 18, of 13634 Mogadore Ave. NW. Uniontown police arrested the Lake High School senior at the school.
“Michael said it was a joke,” Forchione said. “We showed him how we deal with this kind of joke.”
The incident occurred Dec. 2. Using a school computer, Stone created a blog on a Web site that encouraged others to use a link to another site. Once at the second site, Stone told users to “hold down F5 to help crash my school server,” according to police reports.
Forchione said school officials noticed that Lake High’s computer system was slowing down and called a technician who discovered the problem and its source.
School officials contacted Uniontown police, who investigated the case and turned over information to Forchione’s office.
Forchione said he filed charges because students need to know that officials will be aggressive when dealing with computer crime.

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