Julie Pyle’s DirecTV installation was taking so long she decided to bake cookies for the installers. Sadly for Julie, the installation would not end with snack time. Julie was led at gunpoint out of her Savage, Minnesota home, ordered to the ground and handcuffed. Why? Her DirecTV installer had joked to his dispatcher that they were being “held hostage until they were done.”

The dispatcher heard, “gun,” not “done,” and called 911. From the Savage Pacer (emphasis ours):

Information contained in court documents indicates that a Scott County dispatcher spoke directly with one of the technicians prior to police arriving at Pyle’s home and the man said, “We are not being held hostage by the customer, we were held, being held hostage by DirecTV.” The other installer told the police dispatcher, “I think there’s a major misconstrued statement going right now. Maybe they heard in the background the statement quote unquote to my manager that I am stuck [here].”

In a statement issued shortly after the incident occurred, a representative of DirecTV stated the company’s first priority is the safety of its customers and its employees. “We take threats very seriously and have trained our customer service team on how to respond to emergency situations … We sincerely apologize for any embarrassment or other duress that the customer and installers experienced as a result of this incident.”

The Pyles are suing DirecTV. Can you blame them? —MEGHANN MARCO

DirecTV ‘hostage’ case filed in federal court [Savage Pacer] (Thanks, Mike!)
(Photo: Meghann Marco)

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