Tragedy Casts Shadow Over Hilarious Prank

A seemingly innocent office prank resulted in a grizzly scene early Monday morning as 57 year-old bank teller Elizabeth Cranton was crushed under the weight of 50,000 Sacagawea dollar coins.

A timeline of events, pieced together from employee interviews and limited forensic evidence, shows that the plan was first hatched on Wednesday of the previous week after Cranton made an off-the-cuff, disparaging statement about the Sacagawea dollar, stating that it was “unwieldy and too similar in size to the traditional quarter.” Upon hearing this remark, fellow teller, part Native American, and longtime dollar coin advocate Cheryl Pees-in-stream took it upon herself to teach a valuable lesson about criticizing the Sacagawea dollar, while adding some much needed humor to the typically dreary banking world.

Pees-in-stream presented the plan to shift supervisor Michael Langan. Langan, who had hated Cranton ever since she threw out his Applebee’s leftovers while cleaning out the employee refrigerator, quickly agreed, stating that it would be “good to give that bitch Cranton a taste of her own medicine.” How crushing a woman with thousands of coins is like mistakenly throwing out leftovers, we may never know.

The plan was initiated on Friday, when Langan placed the order for a surplus of Sacagawea dollars. When he and Pees-in-stream arrived Monday morning, the coins were waiting for them. They set up a crude booby-trap in the bank vault, rigging a crate to tip when the door was opened and showering the person below with the metallic currency.

Originally, Langan and Pees-in-stream had planned on using 10,000 coins with the intention of giving Cranton a minor concussion and teaching her an unforgettable lesson. Pees-in-stream later decided this may not be enough to get the point across, and added 10,000 more. The remaining 30,000 were added by Langan, who wanted Cranton to “feel the figurative crush of opening the refrigerator door and not seeing your Applebee’s leftovers by experiencing the literal crush of 50,000 Sacagawea dollar coins.”

Langan and Pees-in-stream both face charges of second-degree murder. Their trials are scheduled to begin later this month.