Police say girl made up attack story

COSTA MESA — Police are seeking charges against a teenage girl who, out of fear of getting into trouble with her mother, allegedly made up a story about being kidnapped at night by two men in a city park.

On Sunday morning, the 17-year-old Costa Mesa girl told police that two Latino men with gang tattoos had attacked her overnight while she hung out alone at TeWinkle Park, police said.

“It causes fear to the community thinking there’s two perpetrators out there,” said Lt. Bryan Glass. “There’s resources that go toward investigating the incident and responding.”

The girl told police and her mother that she took a bus from Santa Ana to a stop near Orange Coast College, and was going to walk to her 19th Street home from there. Along the way, she decided to hang out at TeWinkle Park by herself.

She had reported that it was about 9:30 p.m. when the two men grabbed her in the park. She told police that the men dragged her by the hair to some picnic tables where they used her shoelaces to bind her hands and feet.

The girl also reported that the men held a knife to her throat and choked her so she couldn’t scream. She said she was able to get away from assailants when another man walked into the park and scared the suspects off.

The story was more elaborate than a regular falsified report, Glass said.

“She actually got into the details of how it all unraveled,” he said.

Detectives said there were inconsistencies in her story and no physical evidence to support her claims. The investigators concluded that she lied to police because she was out late where she shouldn’t’ have been, and didn’t want her mom to find out about it.

She could be in bigger trouble now. Detectives are petitioning the juvenile court system to file charges against the teen for filing a false police report.