On Tuesday morning, Michael Scott Beckman told a 911 dispatcher he had just escaped from three captors who held him at gunpoint and robbed him downtown. At 10:05 a.m. police raced to the corner of Pacific Avenue and Laurel Street — where the freed man was waiting — and for three hours a dozen officers pulled over cars and stopped people for questioning.
Then Beckman recanted his story. The kidnapping was an excuse for missing work, police said Beckman later told them.
It’s not something we see all the time, but we do see it,” prosecutor Dave Genochio said.
In March, a Scotts Valley woman claimed a $5,000 winning lottery ticket was stolen out of her hand outside the Scotts Valley Safeway. Police later determined Adriana Bartch, 35, had made up the theft story and never had a winning ticket. She was arrested on suspicion of filing a false police report.
Also in March, a teenage girl lied to authorities when she said a masked man stabbed her at San Lorenzo Valley High School, prompting a 2 1/2-hour campus lockdown. The Sheriff’s Office decided not to pursue charges against her because of her age and the problems she was dealing with, deputies said at the time.
Reminds me of our own local story from 2003 – the drug deal gone bad
