The New Jersey teenager who asked Twitter to call 911 because of an intruder in her home was apparently lying.
At about 6:12 pm Sunday, 16-year-old Kara Alongi sent a typo filled tweet asking people to call 911 on her behalf because someone was in her Clark, New Jersey, home. Police have now said that Alongi’s house appeared undisturbed when they arrived that night. And at about the same time she sent the tweet, a taxi was ordered to her home.
“K-9 units tracked Kara’s scent from the back door of the house, through a neighbor’s yard and then to the sidewalk and around the corner back onto her block where the scent goes cold,” Clark police chief Alan Scherb said in a news release. “Later, the [taxi] driver positively identified Alongi as the fare he picked up and said he drove her to the Rahway Train Station, dropping her off a few minutes later.”
Alongi’s tweet on Sunday started a Twitter frenzy. It collected more than 30,000 retweets and helped inspire the trending hashtag #helpfindkara. As a result of all the Twitter attention, the Clark police received more than 6,000 phone calls about the missing teen, the Star-Ledger reported.
“It sent more manpower (down) these wrong-way streets,” Scherb told the Ledger. “It hampers us because we have to follow up on bogus leads.”
The authorities are still searching for Alongi and have not determined whether she will face criminal charges for misleading police.
“Kara might feel that she will be in trouble if she comes home after this scare and causing a panic. At this point all everyone care about is seeing her safe and at her home where she belongs,” Scherb said in the news release.
Photo via Twitter