Detroit police: Charge woman who faked abduction

ECORSE, Mich. — Investigators who determined that an 18-year-old woman lied about being abducted and held for 16 hours in Michigan said Monday they plan to ask prosecutors to charge her.

Police in the Detroit suburb of Ecorse, where the woman was found Friday, will send the case to the Wayne County prosecutor’s office, Lt. Greg Blade said at a news conference. Charges could include filing a false police report, Blade said.

The woman had cuts that appeared to be self-inflicted, Blade said.

“It started not to click,” said police Chief Michael Moore. “My frustration level was very high. We are a cash-strapped city … and this cost us quite a bit of money.”

Moore said the woman didn’t act alone and was never in physical danger.

“At no time was she without a friend,” he said.

Police did not discuss the woman’s motive for lying about the abduction.

The sheriff’s department in neighboring Monroe County said the woman was talking with a friend on her phone Thursday night when she said she was stopping to help someone by the side of a road in Bedford Township. She told her friend that she was being followed by a man with a gun. Then the call was disconnected.

When the woman was found about 45 miles from that spot on Friday she told officials she had been abducted.

A Monroe sheriff’s detective and an FBI agent reinterviewed the woman Sunday.

“As a result of that interview, it was determined that the incident did not take place, as originally reported,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement. It said the sheriff’s department forwarded its report to prosecutors in Monroe County.