During questioning, the 14-year-old girl who told police she had
been kidnapped from Gavilan College admitted she lied about her
allegations, police said.
During questioning, the 14-year-old girl who told police she had been kidnapped from Gavilan College admitted she lied about her allegations, police said.
“There were some holes in her story that the detectives wanted to fill and they discovered her story didn’t match up,” Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Sgt. Rick Sung said.
Deputies are working with the District Attorney to determine how to deal with the girl’s false police report, Sung said.
“It is a crime to make a false police report,” he said. “We spent a lot of time and resources investigating this matter.”
Though Gavilan spokeswoman Jan Bernstein Chargin said she was relieved that what was reported did not actually happen, getting the word out to students about the alleged abduction “consumed hours of staff time.”
The uniformed officers on campus and crime scene tape ringing several parking spots in Parking Lot C Monday afternoon also didn’t do much to put students at ease, she said. The college received phone calls, especially from parents whose children are in the college’s child development program. Bernstein Chargin sent out e-mails, posted flyers near where the incident allegedly occurred, worked to help deputies find witnesses, and posted emergency alerts online.
The girl – a student from Dr. T.J. Owens Gilroy Early College Academy, an accelerated high school on Gavilan’s campus – went missing Monday morning, only to surface at noon when she called police to tell them she had been abducted. Sung and Bernstein Chargin said they still do not know where the girl actually was during the time she was missing from school.
The girl went to her first class Monday morning, Sung said. Mid-morning, staff at the school noticed she was gone, but that her books were still at the school, and reported her absence to campus security and the principal around 10 a.m. The girl initially told police that she was walking through a parking lot when a white cargo van backed into a parking space and three men jumped out of the rear door and pulled her into it. The suspects drove around the city for two hours until they realized they had the wrong person, the girl told deputies.
According to the girl’s story, about 12 p.m., the men dropped her off a few miles from campus near the intersection of U.S. 101 and Highway 25, and she called police on her cell phone. Deputies then went out to the intersection, picked her up and investigated further.
Multiple deputies and staff from the Early College Academy, Gavilan and the Gilroy Unified School District, which runs the academy, spent at least the rest of the day investigating the incident.
The Dispatch received dozens of comments, more than half of which wrote the incident off as a lie. But several readers who identified themselves as students at the Early College Academy stood behind their fellow student, calling on the strict honor code the students pledge to uphold. Many pleaded with those leaving negative comments to give the girl the benefit of the doubt.
“What student, especially one that goes to GECA, would make that sort of thing up?” wrote one reader. “Each student at GECA was hand-picked because of their responsibility.”
As of 3 p.m. Thursday, police have not arrested her and the district attorney has not charged her with making a false police report. Though Bernstein Chargin said “it would not be unreasonable to assume there would be some consequences,” she would not describe the possibilities.
Early College Academy Principal MaryAnn Boylan could not immediately be reached for comment.
