Riverside County woman calls 911 on family at Costco, then police investigate and arrest her instead

A Southern California pistillate has been arrested aft her societal media posts astir a kid she saw astatine Costco led to “criminal accusations and radical bias” against the girl’s parents, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said.

The 23-year-old pistillate from Desert Hot Springs faces charges of providing mendacious accusation to a constabulary serviceman and knowingly filing a mendacious constabulary report.

The pistillate had posted a video of a household eating astatine a Costco successful Palm Desert connected Aug. 20. There were 5 children; 1 of them, a teenage girl, is Black. The pistillate said the teen had seemed sad, truthful she approached her and repeatedly asked if she was OK. When the household near the nutrient court, the pistillate taking the video followed them to the parking batch and past called 911.

In her societal media posts, she claimed the miss had “begged for help” and said her parents raped and different abused her.

The posts were wide shared by societal media users who identified the miss and her parents by sanction and publicized their location address. They urged radical to telephone the father’s workplace — a dental bureau — and to enactment unit connected kid payment officials to “save” the teen.

Much of the animosity toward the parents centered connected the information that the household is biracial: The mates and the different children are White, and the miss successful question is Black.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department coordinated with the constabulary successful Gilbert, Ariz., wherever the household lives, and said it was satisfied that nary maltreatment was occurring — that they were “by each accounts a blessed and steadfast family.” Arizona’s kid extortion bureau besides investigated.

In announcing the apprehension Saturday of the pistillate who took the video, the sheriff’s section alleged she fabricated the allegations and that her “reckless actions … caused this household to endure done decease threats, closure of the father’s business, and unnecessary accent and play to the child.”

In addition, the “significant nationalist outrage” implicit the allegations caused a flood of telephone calls to the sheriff’s dispatch center, “taking up invaluable telephone time,” the section said.

Correction: This nonfiction initially said the arrested pistillate is 21, arsenic reported by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. It was revised to hold with the jail’s booking record, which gives her property arsenic 23.