April Fool's Day dummy falls 10 stories, lands in court

The judge in Rolling Meadows courtroom 209 methodically doles out justice to the typical collection of people with tickets for overweight trucks and underage smoking. The April Fool's Day case of 19-year-old George H. Borawski of Palatine is different.

"I know some people are calling me an idiot," Borawski will tell me after his day in court. "But the way I see it, if I didn't get caught for it, nobody would be calling me an idiot."

Borawski's aim was to be hailed as a fool.

"The only thing I plead guilty of is having a sense of humor," the teen tells Judge Donna Phelps Felton. Sensing that the judge doesn't share his sense of mirth, a frustrated Borawski implores, "It was April Fool's Day."

Knowing a female friend was about to pick him up from the condo where he lives at One Renaissance Place, Borawski planned an April Fool's stunt. Using a combination of plastic bottles, coat hangers, clothes, bowling shoes, his favorite sheepskin aviator's hat and the cast that had just been removed from his broken leg, Borawski fashioned a dummy designed to look like him.

Then, as his friend approached at 1:30 in the afternoon, Borawski screamed and pushed the dummy out his 10-story window.

"I observed a lifelike person that fell and hit the office window," testifies Phyllis Peters, property manager at the condo association. "I immediately called 911 because I thought someone fell or jumped."

With police on the way, Peters and Borawski discussed the matter.

"I was furious," Peters says. "I told him his behavior was uncalled for."

A fake suicide isn't funny, and the falling dummy could have injured someone, Peters argues.

"She was screaming and swearing at me," Borawski testifies, adding that a doorman threw out a barb suggesting he would be sexually violated in jail. "I thought it was no big deal. … I think they are really overreacting."

While a few courthouse employees smile, and one later suggests Borawski should have found a way to incorporate ketchup in his prank, the no-nonsense judge cuts off all personal allegations. She finds Borawski guilty of one count of disorderly conduct.

"You may not think it's a big deal, but it's a big deal," Felton tells Borawski. "Someone could have had a heart attack. … It's a very, very immature joke."

She fines Borawski $500 in addition to the expected $135 in court costs.

Borawski politely answers all my questions outside the courtroom, rubbing a 3-inch stretch of chin hair that hangs from his bearded face.

"They didn't tell you I was in a wheelchair, did they?" Borawski says, nodding appreciatively as I scribble notes on the pathetic nature of his plight. "It just gets better and better doesn't it? For you, not for me."

He cocks his head as if to deliver a belly laugh, but all he can muster is a chuckle.

He was a line cook at a restaurant and was working a couple of other jobs, too, when his bicycle was hit by a car last September, Borawski says. He shows the railroad tracks of scars on both legs as he talks of surgeries, blood transfusions, metal plates, rods and screws. During his lengthy recovery, Borawski uses crutches as much as he can, but opted for the wheelchair today.

He says he doesn't have money for the fine, and will, once again, have to dip into the money that "Grandma left me for college."

It gets worse. On the day after his prank, Borawski says he went to the condo office "to apologize" and get back his dummy. Instead, Borawski ended up receiving a second citation for disorderly conduct and another potentially expensive day in court.

"I still think what I did was funny, and that these people are crazy," Borawski says as he rolls away from the courtroom.

"Get a life," he says to a departing Peters, who halts a second before visibly stifling her urge to respond.

"C'mon," Borawski mumbles to himself, as if he can't believe everyone isn't on his side. "It was April Fool's Day."