Atlanta police say woman made fake 911 call prior to rapper Young Scooter's death
Published in News & Features
ATLANTA — The bizarre string of events that led to an Atlanta rapper’s death began when Demetria Spence made a fake call to 911, according to police.
Investigators said it was the 31-year-old woman’s 911 call that sent officers to a southeast Atlanta home on Friday afternoon. And the arrival of officers at the home prompted the rapper known as Young Scooter to run until he fatally injured himself jumping over a fence, police and the medical examiner’s office have said.
Spence was arrested and charged with transmitting a false public alarm, a felony. She was booked into the Fulton County jail and Wednesday morning, she was granted $7,500 bond, court records showed.
Police have not released details on the possible relationship, if any, between Spence and the rapper, whose real name was Kenneth Bailey. Bailey’s publicist told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution his family had no comment about the arrest.
And Spence never mentioned the rapper during a 10-minute conversation with 911 operators. But she said she was witnessing a man beating a naked woman in the front yard of a home on William Nye Drive, according to audio of the call released this week.
While trying to escape officers, the rapper cut his leg on one of two fences he attempted to jump over, police have said. The injury causing “marked” blood loss, the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office said Tuesday. But the autopsy confirmed what investigators said hours after Bailey’s death: that he had injured himself and no officer’s weapon was involved.
“This injury was not a gunshot wound,” the medical examiner said.
Officers were unable to locate any signs of the crimes described by the 911 caller. And investigators were skeptical of the call itself, including whether the caller was actually witnessing what she described.
Investigators initially asked for the public’s help in finding the caller.
That’s because the call was placed from DeKalb County and transferred to a Fulton County operator, according to the conversation during the call. The caller used an “SOS” phone, or a cellphone no longer on a cellular network, a police spokesperson said.
By Tuesday evening, police announced the caller had been located and was identified as Spence.
State law says the transmitting a false public alarm charge can be applied “if serious bodily harm or death results from the response of a public safety agency.” According to her arrest warrant, Spence admitted to investigators she had made the phony call.
Spence “did admittedly request the services of the Atlanta Police Department and report a false criminal act transpiring, prompting emergency response from first responders that ended in the death of an individual...” her warrant states.
According to court documents, Spence lives in DeKalb, just over 20 miles from the William Nye Drive address.
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(Atlanta Journal-Constitution staff writer DeAsia Page contributed to this story.)
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