Woman Lied About Kidnapping Story, Police Say

A woman fabricated a story about an attempted kidnapping of a child in a Lilburn store, police said, because she was angry that the child's parents weren't watching him while they were shopping.

Lilburn police arrested Pamela Ann Strong on Sept. 17 and charged her with false report of a crime.

Strong told police on Aug. 30 that she had seen a man try to kidnap a boy at Park Avenue Thrift Store. In trying to find the suspect, Lilburn police questioned her again on Sept. 14, and Strong admitted then that she had made up the story and that she never saw the suspect touch the child or attempt to grab him.

"This is a serious offense," said Lilburn Police spokesman Capt. Ben Haynes. "The department spent several man hours trying to locate this suspect. The department takes these types of reports extremely serious and when this was intitially reported other investigations were dropped to focus on this one."

In the initial investigation, the child's father told police that he was looking at pants while his son was in the toy section. Strong was "upset the child's parents let him look at the toys by himself and were not watching him."