PROVO — A Tennessee teenager is in custody after he called the LDS Missionary Training Center in Provo on Tuesday and said he shot and killed his mother.

"I shot my mom," the 13-year-old boy said. "Dead."

The prank call to the MTC in Utah sent police in at least two Tennessee jurisdictions on a wild goose chase that lasted for eight hours, Clarksville Police Sgt. Cheryl Anderson told WTVF-TV in Nashville.

"There were a lot of resources used thinking we had another homicide," Anderson said. "You have officers, detectives, patrol officers searching for something that didn't occur."

The boy dialed a toll-free 888 number people can call to ask for free copies of the Book of Mormon from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The phone number rings at the MTC's referral center, where calls for free Bibles and church videos are fielded by new missionaries and local volunteers.

The boy knew what number he was calling, Anderson said.

"I just wanted to talk to somebody and tell you that my mother died, and I really need God in my life," he said before lying about shooting his mother.

"After the call concluded, someone at the MTC called BYU police," university spokesman Michael Smart said. "It never got past dispatch. Dispatch took the originating phone number and found out roughly where the number came from and called the relevant law enforcement agency and handed it over to them."

Police said the boy's mother is alive. Police took him to a juvenile detention center in Columbia, Tenn. He faces up to three years in custody.

Church officials would not say if the call taker, whose first name was Jared, was a missionary. The call was placed in the afternoon, when new missionaries field calls as part of the training they do during their three weeks to three months at the center.

Volunteers generally work only night shifts on weekdays.

The church has 17 missionary training centers around the world, but 80 percent of new missionaries are trained at the Provo facility on the north edge of the BYU campus.

An average of 2,700 missionaries at a time live and train at the center, receiving religious instruction and learning teaching skills and in many cases foreign languages. They leave to serve in 120 countries for a total of two years for young men and 18 months for young women.

The referral center provides materials to people interested in the church, scriptures or videos. It also generates contacts for missionaries around the world, according to an article in the June 2000 issue of the church magazine for teenagers, the New Era.

"Studies show that full-time missionaries are the most effective at obtaining phone referrals, and talking with nonmembers on the phone gives missionaries many opportunities to resolve concerns, bear testimony and make appointments before they even arrive in the mission field," the article said. "The referrals are then forwarded to the appropriate mission."

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