John Doh!

I was having a hard time coming up with ideas for this week's Blotter illustration, which involved a man, "John Doe," who had falsely reported being stabbed. I just kept going back to the old sketch book but nothing seemed to take. That's usually a bad sign. Damn that fickle muse!

Once I decided to relax and just have some fun with it, the main face sort of drew itself. The others followed. I was also surprised with how the colors turned out. It started with an all-white background, but that didn't seem to capture the gravity of the situation.

Blotter: JOHN DOE'S BIG DAY: At 11:20 a.m., an officer responded to a call about a person stabbed at a store on Joseph E. Boone Boulevard. The caller had a male voice and said he was at the pay phone outside the store. "When I arrived on scene, there was no one standing at the pay phone or outside of the location," the officer noted. All the store workers said no one had come inside saying they were stabbed. A fire truck and hospital medics also arrived at the scene. Eventually, the officer saw a man and woman arguing about 50 yards away. The officer asked the couple if there was a problem. A woman yelled out, "Ask him, he's the one who called. I was just walking to get away from him." So the officer asked the man why he'd called to say he had been stabbed. The man said "because" and tried to walk away. The man said he fell on something at his house, and got a small scratch on his shoulder. The man never explained why he claimed he had been stabbed and he would not give police his name. Eventually, the woman walked away – crying, screaming and yelling at the man to leave her alone. Police charged the man with abusing 911 services. The officer wrote, "Mr. Doe had police, fire and Grady [Memorial Hospital] all respond to the call with lights and sirens going, with the roadways icy, for a fake stabbing call."