Woman arrested for making false police report to avoid a date with a man she met online
An incident unfolded recently where a woman in North Liberty, Iowa, was arrested for falsely reporting a crime in an attempt to get out of a first date. Sumaya Thomas, 18, had arranged a romantic evening with a man she had matched with on a dating app. However, when he arrived at her doorstep, Thomas suddenly had a change of heart and decided to make a distress call to the authorities, SSP reported.
In her call to the police, Thomas claimed that the man was an "abusive" ex-boyfriend who was "threatening" her physical well-being. She went so far as to falsely state that she was pregnant with his child and alleged that he intended to harm her by hitting, punching, kicking, and even stabbing her. Officers promptly responded to the scene, where the man revealed that he had met Thomas through a dating app just a week earlier. Constructing a credible defense, he provided officials with evidence of their messaging history.
The retrieved messages confirmed the man's account, proving that their acquaintance was recent and that their communication had taken place through the app. In stark contrast, Thomas had informed the officers that they had known each other for two years and had communicated using Snapchat. It later surfaced that Thomas had comprehensively deceived the authorities. She had purposely deleted the messages she had exchanged with her date and subsequently admitted to fabricating the call out of second thoughts about meeting him. According to the police report, she confessed, "she didn't think officers would help, so she made up this call and the events that she described."
As a result of Thomas' deceptive actions, the innocent man, who remains unidentified, was unjustly detained for over an hour. Thomas herself faced legal repercussions and has been arrested on charges, including two counts of False Report of Indictable Offense to Public Entity, which constitutes a misdemeanor, and one count of False Report on a 911 call.