Leon
20-02-2003, 16:27
EDMONTON, Alberta (Reuters) - Canadian police in a frantic search for an abducted woman dispatched a SWAT team to her home before officers on a routine patrol across town found her naked and bound in the back of a car.
But police in Edmonton, Alberta, soon realised they had a problem -- she did not want to be rescued.
It emerged that the 17-year-old female and a man at the scene were engaged in a role-playing game, but not before the man was arrested and the woman sent to hospital for examination. She was less than co-operative, police said.
"She did answer questions, but she wasn't very forthcoming with the detectives. They pieced it together that it was some form of fantasy scenario on the part of the people involved," Edmonton police spokesman Wes Bellmore said on Wednesday.
"It wasn't so funny for us because we burned up a lot of taxpayers' money dealing with this."
The saga began just before midnight on Tuesday when a man called 911. He reported he had been talking on the phone to the woman when she said someone had broken into her house. Then the line went dead.
Police sent a tactical team to the house in west-central Edmonton, because the address had shown up on their records as the site of a previous weapons complaint.
"We had to make sure the suite was cleared by a tactical team in case there were weapons involved. When all was said and done, there were about 10 police units involved in this," Bellmore said.
About the time the SWAT team determined the home was empty, officers in another part of town found the car in a secluded area by a golf course, with the woman inside bound with tape and her would-be abductor outside the vehicle, he said.
"She was not fully clothed. She was in a state of ... she was naked," Bellmore said.
Police arrested the man, who eventually told investigators that the scenario was consensual. The woman refused to file a complaint.
"As far as our detectives can tell, there was nothing malicious about it," he said. "We really had nothing else to do except release everybody, probably with a stern warning to be more careful."
Police said they did not believe the man who called 911 had been aware of the nature of the events.
ADVERTISEMENT
But police in Edmonton, Alberta, soon realised they had a problem -- she did not want to be rescued.
It emerged that the 17-year-old female and a man at the scene were engaged in a role-playing game, but not before the man was arrested and the woman sent to hospital for examination. She was less than co-operative, police said.
"She did answer questions, but she wasn't very forthcoming with the detectives. They pieced it together that it was some form of fantasy scenario on the part of the people involved," Edmonton police spokesman Wes Bellmore said on Wednesday.
"It wasn't so funny for us because we burned up a lot of taxpayers' money dealing with this."
The saga began just before midnight on Tuesday when a man called 911. He reported he had been talking on the phone to the woman when she said someone had broken into her house. Then the line went dead.
Police sent a tactical team to the house in west-central Edmonton, because the address had shown up on their records as the site of a previous weapons complaint.
"We had to make sure the suite was cleared by a tactical team in case there were weapons involved. When all was said and done, there were about 10 police units involved in this," Bellmore said.
About the time the SWAT team determined the home was empty, officers in another part of town found the car in a secluded area by a golf course, with the woman inside bound with tape and her would-be abductor outside the vehicle, he said.
"She was not fully clothed. She was in a state of ... she was naked," Bellmore said.
Police arrested the man, who eventually told investigators that the scenario was consensual. The woman refused to file a complaint.
"As far as our detectives can tell, there was nothing malicious about it," he said. "We really had nothing else to do except release everybody, probably with a stern warning to be more careful."
Police said they did not believe the man who called 911 had been aware of the nature of the events.
ADVERTISEMENT