Woman pleads guilty to filing false report of purse snatching
A woman faces sentencing after Ferndale police say she made a bogus report that a man stole her purse containing prescription pills and other items as she walked along Nine Mile Road near Woodward Ave.
Tracy Kelly, 55, of Walled Lake was in Ferndale 43rd District Court for a hearing Thursday. The charge against her was reduced from a four-year felony to a misdemeanor in a plea deal.
Kelly admitted to Ferndale 43rd District Judge Joseph Longo, she made a false report. Longo, however, delayed sentencing, and said he first wanted the probation department to complete a background report on the suspect.
Police spent many hours investigating the false report.
Police said Kelly showed up at
the station to file her report a day after she claimed the incident happened last August.
After police investigated the case Kelly was arraigned last week and released on personal bond.
Kelly falsely told police a tall white man ran up
behind her, grabbed her purse and kept running east to the other side of Woodward, police said.
She also claimed that the contents of her purse included prescriptions for Adderall and Xanax, both controlled substances, as well as cash and a cellphone, said Ferndale police Detective Brendan Moore.
“One could surmise that she made the report because
she wanted to get more prescription medication,” he said.
Investigators became suspicious as they investigated the case.
Kelly told a detective that she parked her car downtown in the West Troy lot behind Rosie O’Grady’s bar to meet a girlfriend at a bar, but the friend never showed up.
“The detective determined it would have been
impossible to park in that lot at the time because it was closed and under construction” for the dot parking deck, Moore said.
Police said they got surveillance video for the location of the supposed purse snatching the day the suspect said it happened.
The detective told Kelly that the surveillance video did not support her claims, police said.
Further, the suspect told
police she had been with a man, whom she named, the evening of the robbery, but the girlfriend Kelly said she was to meet that night told police that was impossible because the man was dead, Moore said.
“The suspect was asked to tell the truth,” Moore said. “She said her purse was stolen, but it happened at the Meijer store at Eight Mile and Woodward in Detroit.”