UA student facing false-report charge

FAYETTEVILLE -- A 20-year-old University of Arkansas at Fayetteville student faces a felony charge of filing a false report after admitting she lied about a man groping her at a campus parking garage, according to court documents filed Wednesday along with a warrant for the woman's arrest.

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Lindsey Sweetin's initial report of being assaulted and fighting off her attacker led UA authorities March 9 to issue a community warning. Sweetin told police the incident took place Feb. 26. On March 11, UA sent out another message stating the report was false.

Camera footage at the Harmon Avenue garage failed to show any man matching Sweetin's description of her attacker, a police affidavit states. The video also showed Sweetin in the garage for a different length of time than she had initially described to police. Confronted with the video evidence, Sweetin admitted to being untruthful, the affidavit states.

Asked why she made a false report, Sweetin explained she had texted her boyfriend about seeing a man that scared her, "and that her boyfriend made a suggestion that something more might have happened," according to the affidavit, signed by UA Police Department Detective Josh Bowen.

"Sweetin stated that her boyfriend then told her brother, and the story got worse from there, but Sweetin continued to go along with it because she did not know what else to do," the affidavit states, noting that Sweetin's brother had contacted university police March 8 to report his sister being assaulted.

Last year, a similar case led to the conviction of a 19-year-old woman after she falsely reported being raped at a campus parking deck. Julia Garcia, a UA freshman at the time of the false report, was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay a $1,250 fine.

Sweetin will be booked into jail and then released, said Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Denis Dean, with a court arraignment expected about a month after Sweetin's arrest.

Metro on 04/16/2015

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