LITTLE ROCK — A 12-year-old girl lied to investigators when she told police Friday morning that two men attempted to abduct her from a North Little Rock apartment complex, authorities said.
The girl, whose name was not released because she is a juvenile, will face a felony charge of filing a false police report for purportedly inventing allegations that resulted in two North Little Rock men being arrested.
North Little Rock Police Department Sgt. Terry Kuykendall said authorities were working with prosecutors Friday afternoon to free the two men. They had been booked into jail on preliminary charges of attempted kidnapping.
The girl told an officer shortly after midnight that two men attempted to grab her from outside an apartment on North Palm Street. She described the men, gave police a license plate number from the suspect car and then pointed it out when it drove down a nearby alleyway a short time later.
The suspects were stopped and arrested after a traffic stop.
But in questioning the next morning, the girl admitted she fabricated the story, Kuykendall said. It remains unclear why she did so. She apparently did not know the two men she accused, Kuykendall said.
"I'm very thankful that our detectives realized that something just wasn't quite right and decided to bring her back in for an additional interview," Kuykendall said. "We were able to clear these guys quicker than the judicial process would have. It could have taken up to a year."
Bonds for the men were set at $25,000, according to reports written after the initial arrests.
Kuykendall said he did not believe there was anything police could have done differently to have avoided arresting suspects who were actually innocent. One of the men told investigators they hadn't done anything while the other did not provide a statement, Kuykendall said.
"We don't have any control over a victim lying to us," he said. "As many times as we put people in jail, we're about ultimately proving the truth and finding the facts and what really happened. In this case, we didn't just go with what someone who said they were a victim said. We looked at the totality of everything that happened."
Kuykendall said he didn't know where the girl's parents were during the incident.
The girl was taken to a juvenile detention facility until she can appear in front of a judge in juvenile court.
Story by Gavin Lesnick of
http://www.arkansasonline.com/
