Nineteen-year-olds foolishly scope president from Olomouc rooftop

Two nineteen-year-olds from the town of Olomouc in Moravia, apparently weren’t thinking - at all - during a visit by the Czech president last Monday, June 14. Hoping to see Václav Klaus from a distance, they climbed onto a rooftop and used a scope from an air rifle to watch Mr Klaus meeting locals in a nearby square. But it wasn’t long before they were noticed by bodyguards and plains clothes officers and consequently apprehended and taken for questioning. Both are lucky the incident had a happy ending.

Václav Klaus

Two young men from the Moravian town of Olomouc may have thought it was clever to climb on a roof with an air rifle and watch the Czech president through the gun’s scope, but it’s hard to imagine how. Not unless they were trying to win one of the Darwin Awards, which recognizes people who successfully take themselves “out of the gene pool” through astoundingly stupid actions. Had either of them been less fortunate, had they fallen or been shot, they might have easily qualified. Here was the scene: one pointed the scope, which had been removed from the rifle, at the president, while the other swerved the air rifle in different directions, taking aim out of sheer boredom from the rooftop.

Both were noticed by plains clothes agents in no time and both were lucky: realising that they had been spotted, they retreated from the roof to a nearby apartment. There, they were apprehended by police and after a brief denial, admitted everything. The duo said they hadn’t intended to cause any harm but only wanted to see the president. The key words they used to describe their actions? “Pitomá klukovina” - a dumb stunt. Indeed.

Had they tried it on someone else – such as the US president Barack Obama, for example, during his visit to Prague in April, they would have been picked up by snipers within seconds and quite possibly shot, an expert for the country’s Rapid Response Unit said – although he told Mladá fronta Dnes the two would have never even made it into position. Even in this case, the duo put themselves foolishly at risk and no one has said whether here too they could have been targeted. The Czech police have not revealed whether any of their own snipers had the teens in their sights or whether they might have shot. The police did reportedly express disbelief and were at a loss that the young men would get – and go through with - such a stupid idea.

Illustrative photo: www.sxc.hu, Søren Faurby

As for the teens? Following the incident, both were handcuffed and taken for questioning while the police, understandably, checked to make sure the air rifle was not a functioning weapon. As it stands, officially they are treating the incident as a case of disorderly conduct, one that is likely to be shelved as neither of them really broke the law. In any event, the young men themselves must have breathed a sigh of relief that they escaped with health intact: as one of them told the daily Mladá fronta Dnes: the incident will make a good pub anecdote one day but for now he was aware how lucky he and his friend had been.