Police respond to 911 call, get big surprise

CONWAY, AR - "There's people down the street," a 911 caller told the Conway dispatcher. "They have three cars blocking the entrance into North Heights on Roberts Road and they keep jumping back and forth out of a truck, and they look to have ski masks on."

The 911 caller also told police the men might have a gun. So police responded in full force.

"When the 911 call came in we had no idea what was going on," explained Conway Police Spokesperson Latresha Woodruff.

Turns out, four of the six people on Roberts Road were Hendrix College students. The guns weren't real, and the ski masks were for show. They were filming a movie for a festival at Hendrix.

"Our friend Roberto is very concerned about the issues with kidnappings that happen in Mexico," said Tim Dinehart, one of the film makers. "We have this thing called the Red Brick Film Festival and he wanted to bring light to that sort of plight."

Here's the problem for Dinehart and the other five filmmakers though -- police responding to the 911 call - about people in ski masks - had no idea about the movie.

As a result, "somebody could have gotten shot," Woodruff said.

In the end, police wrote all six filmmakers disorderly conduct citations and they'll have to pay a fine or go to court. Also, Conway's chief of police personally called Hendrix. Regarding that phone call, Dean of Students Jim Wiltgen says, "I've been in Student Affairs for 25 years and I've never had an incident like this. So it's a new one for me."

As for Dinehart, he says he wants everyone involved to know how sorry he is. He also said, "I know that if I were to do a film in the future, which I don't plan on, what I should do in that situation ... call the police and let them know ahead of time." Dinehart also went back to the incident location and apologized to neighbors for any inconvenience he may have caused.

According to the Conway police incident report, the six people who were cited for disorderly conduct are Dinehart, Timothy Hart, Isaiah Boone, Roberto Ruiz, Richard Litterst, and Fabian Antonio.

Conway police say they know the film makers did not intentionally do anything wrong, but they feel like the incident had the potential to end badly.