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Carjacking Story Goes Up In Smoke As Man Heads To Jail

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By NEIL JOHNSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 6, 2008

TAMPA It started with a call to 911 about an armed carjacking and ended up with a 40-year-old man jailed on charges he fibbed about the crime.

Tampa police swarmed to Comanche Avenue Saturday night after Eduardo Baez-Rivera told 911 operators that two men took his car at gunpoint.

He even provided descriptions to the emergency line and to the officers who responded, the Tampa Police Department said.

It turns out that wasn't exactly what happened.

While police searched for the carjackers, a woman told an undercover officer that Baez-Rivera had wandered the neighborhood most of the day looking for the car he had traded for drugs, the arrest report said.

When officers asked about the different version of events, he said he had shared a joint with a man earlier then let him "borrow" the car, police said.

At that point Baez-Rivera went from victim to prisoner at the Orient Road Jail where he was booked about 1 a.m. Sunday on misdemeanor charges of falsely reporting a crime and 911 abuse, police said.

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