ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Tuesday, April 30, 1996                TAG: 9604300095
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-1  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: PEARISBURG
SOURCE: LISA K. GARCIA STAFF WRITER

SUICIDE HOAX CASE DISMISSED GIRLS WERE ACCUSED OF FALSE REPORTING

A Giles County judge dismissed charges against two teen-age girls Monday in connection with a February report that the younger girl - a 14-year-old - had jumped to her death from a bridge near Pembroke.

Authorities charged each teen with one count of making a false report after the 14-year-old was found alive two days after the Feb. 18 incident. The Roanoke Times is not naming the girls because of their ages.

The older girl, who is 16, told police she saw her friend jump 40 feet from the Commissary Hill Bridge into the New River. She never wavered from herl's claim that the entire incident was a hoax.

"My daughter was vindicated," the mother said.

Investigator Willie Lucas, who handled the case for the Giles County Sheriff's Office, could not be reached for comment Monday, nor could Commonwealth's Attorney Garland Spangler, who prosecuted it.

In March, Lucas said the 14-year-old girl told him the suicide attempt was a hoax. She did not, however, testify during the trial in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, according to the older girl's lawyer, Frederick Kellerman, who called the younger girl's confession insufficient.

"The judge dismissed the charge because the commonwealth could not make the case," Kellerman said. "It was a really fair result, and I do believe the right result."

The older girl's mother said her daughter's story never changed, while the younger girl's story did. The older girl's mother said the younger girl told deputies she hid in her older friend's bedroom for two days while rescue workers searched the river.

"That's not true; my family closely watched my daughter for 48 hours because she was so distraught over having seen her best friend jump in the river," the older teen's mother said. "There's no way she could have been here."

A two-day search was called off when people called the Sheriff's Office and reported seeing the 14-year-old alive. The girl was found bruised and still wearing the clothes she was seen in the day the jump was reported.

Besides divers and local law enforcement personnel, a state police helicopter was used for several hours to aid the search the first day. The cost of the search was estimated at $10,000.

The younger girl had been living at a friend's house before the incident, but is now back with her parents.

The older girl left school after some classmates threatened her, her mother said. She continued her lessons at home. The girl's mother said school officials were entirely supportive and her daughter will return to school next week.

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