ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 9, 1996 TAG: 9603110035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PEARISBURG
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
While divers spent two days last month searching the frigid New River for a 14-year-old girl who reportedly jumped from a bridge, Giles County authorities believe the teen was at a friend's house.
A county sheriff's investigator said the alleged suicide hoax was an attempt by the girl's 16-year-old friend to help her out of what the two perceived as a bad home situation. The 14-year-old feared her parents would send her to reform school, the investigator said.
"We know now that it was a hoax ... that was planned by the two juveniles," said Willie Lucas of the Giles County Sheriff's Office.
Both girls will be charged with filing a false report to call an emergency vehicle, a misdemeanor. The girls are not being identified because of their ages.
The mother of the 16-year-old said Friday she believes her daughter, who maintains that she saw her friend jump. The woman said her daughter could not have faked the grief she expressed when she thought her friend was dead.
The woman also said it would have been impossible for the 14-year-old to hide in their mobile home, because the family was keeping a close eye on the 16-year-old.
"If she was staying with someone, she was staying with someone else," the woman said.
Lucas said it will be up to Commonwealth's Attorney Garland Spangler to decide if the county can recoup the cost of the search - about $10,000. Divers, rescue volunteers, a state police helicopter and law enforcement personnel took part in the search.
Lucas said the 14-year-old has cooperated with authorities and admitted the hoax.
"There's nothing at all that I could find that goes along with the other girl's story," he said.
Lucas said the 14-year-old was not at the bridge when the older friend said she saw her jump. Rather, he believes she was hiding out - first at a local business, then at the 16-year-old's home.
"Apparently, she stayed in the bedroom" and went in and out through a window, Lucas said.
She turned up alive two days after the reported jump. The 16-year-old and her family went to pick up the girl when she called from the Spruce Run section of the county.
Authorities believe the girl got there by leaving her friend's home, walking about five miles down U.S. 460, then getting in the New River to make it appear that she had indeed jumped into the water.
The girl waded and swam in the river, but she told authorities that she got so cold she thought she was going to die, Lucas said.
The 16-year-old's mother said she fears the 14-year-old felt pressured to change her story to fit the investigators' theory of what happened. And she said she will fight the charges against her daughter.
The 14-year-old had been living with the parent of another friend. Lucas said she is back home and doing very well.
The girl confessed after realizing "the responsibility she had put on everybody else, the danger, the possible loss of life" the searchers risked, Lucas said.
"Everything started to crumble," he said.
One lesson Lucas hopes others learn in the teens' ordeal is that "problems can be handled in a proper manner." No problem is "big enough to have to try to think up some scheme like this."
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