Scots nursery worker who sparked emergency rescue with hoax call avoids jail

Clair Frost, 35, sounded a false alarm from a landline at Killin Nursery School, in Killin, Perthshire - sparking a full-scale search and rescue mission that included her own husband, a retained firefighter.

A nursery school early years educator whose hoax 999 call sparked a major search of a loch has been spared jail – after a sheriff said the law would not allow her to be sent to prison for long enough.

Clair Frost, 35, sounded the false alarm from a landline at Killin Nursery School.

She said she thought she could see an overturned kayak at the “head of the lock” at Loch Tay – a telltale mispronunciation of the Scottish word loch that she was known to employ.

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.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service was considering putting a boat out to search the “vast” and partially ice-covered loch – an operation which would have entailed further risks.

Frost’s husband, a retained firefighter, was called out as part of the search, which was stood down after six hours when realisation dawned that the call was a hoax.

Mother-of-two Frost denied making the call, but her “distinctive, higher-pitched, childlike” tones were identified as hers by two colleagues and a police officer who had all known her for years.

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She 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.”

During the trial, the court heard that the call was received by Scottish Fire and Rescue at 1.15pm on January 17, 2024.

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

Initially, police thought a child at the nursery – which caters for children up to the age of five – 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. It was established he had been playing with a toy phone.

Giving evidence, PC Frickleton said she was later able to listen to a recording of the call, and was “100 per cent certain” 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 her fireman hubby had been called out as part of the search, but denied he would have derived any financial benefit from the shout.

Frost, of Killin, a nursery worker for 15 years, was told she would be allowed to pay the fine at £100 a month.

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

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