A brazen kidnapping case out of San Jose turned out to be a hoax.
San Jose police said the mother who reported a man tried to take her child from her arms Tuesday night admitted to investigators she made the whole thing up.
Now that woman faces possible charges of false reporting of a criminal offense, police said.
Investigators say the mother's confession came after they found inconsistencies in her story. They declined to say what those inconsistencies were or why she made up the story in the first place.
"It's frustrating for the police department to say the least," Albert Morales, a San Jose Police Department spokesperson, said. "In light of our current state of the department with the lack of resources, it was taxing on all of us from the beat officer who was out there responding to the initial investigation to the investigators who went out there."
The woman called 911 around 5:30 p.m. Tuesday from her home on the 200 block of Dayo Court in East San Jose and reported that her daughter was playing in the front yard with her other siblings when a man approached them and started talking to them.
"I was playing with my daughters and he was commenting about how beautiful they were and the color of their hair and one thing lead to another and when he knelt down he grabbed my daughter by her feet-by her ankles, and we were tugging at each other" the woman previously told NBC Bay Area.
She said she won the struggle and the man ran off down Paven Drive.
Neighbors who offered their support and sympathy to the mother, began to change their feelings on Thursday, when they learned she had lied.
"I feel so angry right now because everybody thought it was real and then everybody was so scared," neighbor Harkamal Grewal said.
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Police said her confession to fabricating the story does not end their investigation. It just changes the focus.
As of Friday, Morales said that the investigation is ongoing and the woman's case has not been presented to the DA. If a charge is filed, Morales said, it would be a misdemeanor filing a false police report.
