A resident of Fort Lee, Bergen County, has been charged with creating a false public alarm following her alleged involvement in an incident that occurred on Aug. 19 and involved the Manalapan and Howell police departments.
Monmouth County Acting Prosecutor Christopher J. Gramiccioni announced the charges in an Aug. 27 press release.
Gramiccioni gave the following account of an incident that resulted in officers from multiple police departments searching for an individual who said she was the victim of a kidnapping.
He said police in Monroe Township, Middlesex County, fielded an emergency 911 call from an unidentified woman at 6:35 a.m. Aug. 19. The woman reported she was pulled over in a vehicle and subsequently placed in the backseat of a second car at gunpoint near the intersection of Route 33 and Sweetmans Lane in Manalapan.
The location on Route 33, Manalapan, is several miles east of Monroe Township.
Officers from the Manalapan Police Department immediately responded to the area, but were unable to locate the caller, the vehicle or any witnesses to the alleged incident, according to Gramiccioni.
Further investigation led to a possible location in the area of Hulses Corner Road and Fort Plains Road in Howell, but that did not yield the reported victim, the vehicle or any additional evidence of an abduction.
Because the situation involved a possible abduction, numerous local, county, state and federal law enforcement agencies descended on the area in an effort to locate the possible victim, Gramiccioni said. The area was subsequently cleared and the investigation continued over the next several days in an attempt to locate the caller and substantiate the report, according to the prosecutor.
On Aug. 25, the person alleged to have been the caller was located at a hotel in Willow Grove, Pa. Marian Petro, 46, of Fort Lee, who the prosecutor identified as the caller, was found unharmed and it was learned she had not been abducted.
Further investigation revealed Petro allegedly made several false statements on purpose in her 911 call when she claimed she was held at gunpoint and put into the back seat of a black Mercedes Benz by a black male.
Petro has been charged with third degree creating a false public alarm. She is being held in the Montgomery Township Correctional Facility, Lower Providence, Pa., pending extradition to New Jersey. If convicted of creating a false public alarm, Petro faces a sentence of three to five years in prison, Gramiccioni said.
The investigation was conducted with the partnership of the Manalapan Police Department, the Howell Police Department, the Howell Office of Emergency Management, the Fort Lee Police Department, the Carteret Police Department, the Upper Moreland Township (Pa.) Police Department, the Hatboro (Pa.) Police Department, the NewYork Police Department, the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office, the Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management, the Monmouth County Emergency Response Team, the New Jersey State Police, the United States Marshals Service and the FBI.