Teen accused of Amber Alert hoax found guilty

A 14-year-old girl who sparked a nationwide Amber Alert was found guilty Tuesday of two counts of filing a false police report.

The Caruthersville girl was accused of making two 911 calls to the Dyer County Sheriff's Department on July 15. She told a 911 operator that she and her younger sister were riding down a two-lane highway in a red or burgundy vehicle. She said the driver, an older man, was molesting them and had already slapped her once.

After listening to more than two hours of testimony, Dyer County Juvenile Court Judge Jason Hudson said he believed the girl knew what she was doing when the calls were made.

"This is a very serious situation in that the amount of law enforcement called out for this matter was enormous. 'Huge' doesn't describe it," he told the girl.

Called to action locally were sheriff departments from Dyer and Lauderdale counties in Tennessee and Pemiscot County in Missouri; police departments in Dyersburg, Halls and Caruthersville, Mo.; the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation; and the Missouri Highway Patrol.

Because the girl is a juvenile, the case was transferred to the Pemiscot County Juvenile Office for her sentencing. That is standard procedure in juvenile cases, where rehabilitation, rather than punishment, is the goal.

Assistant District Attorney Reneé Creasy said she plans to make a recommendation to the juvenile office. Officials had previously indicated that they intended to seek reimbursement for costs incurred during the bogus Amber Alert effort. Creasy said that's still a possibility.

During Tuesday's trial, witnesses reported that the 14-year-old was part of a Caruthersville church group taking an outing to the Memphis Zoo. They were on their way home from the zoo when the calls were made on a cell phone belonging to a 12-year-old girl from Aberdeen, Miss. The 12-year-old was spending the summer with her grandmother in Caruthersville.

The 12-year-old testified that her phone was programmed to dial only one phone number: 911. During the trip, she said the 14-year-old took her phone and made the call.

During cross-examination, the 12-year-old said she'd been pushing buttons, including the "9" button. The 14-year-old's attorney, Christy Cooper of the public defender's office, asked why she'd pushed 9 if she wasn't trying to call 911. She said she didn't know.

Another 14-year-old girl from Caruthersville sat between the 12-year-old and the accused on the way from Memphis to Caruthersville. She testified that the 12-year-old dialed 911 and then told the accused 14-year-old to say something. The 12-year-old reportedly explained that she'd been making prank calls to 911 and the operator would recognize her voice.

The accused 14-year-old, an eighth-grader, said she accepted the phone from the 12-year-old and heard a woman asking for her name. The girl told the woman her middle name and answered a few more questions. When the 911 operator heard someone talking in the background and asked who else was there, the 12-year-old grabbed the phone, the accused said.

The accused 14-year-old said she didn't think she was doing anything wrong. But, the following night, she called the Pemiscot County Sheriff's Department and said she knew who'd made the calls. She met Lt. Ryan Holder of the Pemiscot County Sheriff's Department on the morning of July 17.

Holder said the girl didn't fully admit to calling 911, but she did say that she had talked to 911 operators. She also gave the sheriff's department the names of all the girls and adult chaperones in the vehicle.

Diane White, a Dyer County Sheriff's Department dispatcher, said she received two calls from the 14-year-old girl. The first call was made on Highway 51 South at Fowlkes. The second call was picked up by a cell phone tower in Lenox. White said she believed the call was genuine but admitted that she wondered how the girl could make the phone calls while her captor was in the vehicle.

Copies of the 911 calls were played during the trial. The girl's voice sounded the same in both messages.

TBI Special Agent Mark Reynolds said an Amber Alert was issued nationwide after he investigated the call and held a conference call with top TBI officials in Nashville.

Holder conducted the majority of the witness interviews in Caruthersville, with Reynolds sitting in on some of them. Reynolds said he didn't see the accused 14-year-old until she appeared in Dyer County Juvenile Court for the first time. He said he followed the girl and her mother into the lobby after their appearance. The girl and her mother stopped for an interview with a television news crew outside the building. Reynolds said he quickly went downstairs to a tunnel that opened just below the area where the interview was taking place. He said he listened to the interview, during which the girl again admitted that she'd talked to a 911 operator. Reynolds subpoenaed the videotape and played it for the judge on Tuesday. Although the sound was low, it was clear the girl and her mother were upset. They asked why the other girls hadn't been charged and why the adult chaperones weren't facing charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Cooper asked that, too. Reynolds said the 14-year-old was charged because she's the one who gave a false report to law enforcement officers. Reynolds said the girl who dialed 911 wasn't charged because there's no charge for calling 911. He also explained that the adults were not charged because he had no proof that the adults knew the calls were being made.

In her closing statement, Cooper reminded the judge that no analysis of the recorded 911 calls had been made to verify that the accused girl had actually made the calls. Cooper said three girls in the vehicle that day had been making prank phone calls, but only one was charged.

Creasy said the girl wanted people to believe she wasn't making the calls, but her voice was heard in both recordings. "This was not a number of different girls getting on the phone and finishing the statement," she said. Creasy added that it would be farfetched to believe that the girl was just answering the questions of some anonymous woman.

Judge Hudson knew he had to transfer the case to Pemiscot County for disposition, but he didn't want to.

"I hate I have to transfer this case because it is a very serious matter," he said, noting that someone could have died in a real emergency while officers were searching for two girls who were allegedly being molested. "I cannot impress upon you how serious that is."