Woman charged with lying about seeing police shooting suspects

[Muslera]

Illinois woman charged with lying about seeing police shooting suspects

Reuters
First posted: Thursday, September 03, 2015 11:26 AM EDT | Updated: Thursday, September 03, 2015 11:45 AM EDT

An Illinois woman was charged with lying to police after she reported seeing two men near a rural road resembling suspects wanted in the killing of a police officer, causing dozens of officers to flock to the scene, authorities said on Thursday.

Hundreds of police in northern Illinois have been searching for three suspects since Tuesday in the killing of Fox Lake Police Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz, a decorated 30-year veteran policeman, who was shot to death during a foot chase.

Kristin Kiefer, 30, of Vernon Hills, Ill., faces two counts of falsifying a police report after admitting to authorities that she made up the sighting because she wanted attention, the Lake County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.

Some 85 federal, state and local police, 11 canine units and three aircraft responded at about 9:15 p.m. on Wednesday to a remote spot in Lake County near a highway where Kiefer said she saw a white man and a black man near a cornfield after her vehicle broke down, according to the statement.

Kiefer told authorities that the men tried to get into her vehicle, but ran into the cornfield because they feared she was calling police, it said.

Law-enforcement officials said they searched the scene for five hours without finding any sign of the two suspects before Kiefer told investigators she had lied to them because she wanted attention from a family who employs her as a nanny.

Gliniewicz was killed about 5 miles north of where she said she saw the suspects.

The slain officer, a father of four boys, was known locally as "G.I. Joe." Gliniewicz, who had retired as a first sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserve, earned several awards and commendations in the police department, including a medal of valour. He had been involved in a youth law-enforcement training program for about a decade.

"Joe was my best friend, my world, my hero," his wife Mel told a crowd of thousands who gathered for a vigil on Wednesday night for the slain officer, according to local media.