Woman arrested for false Facebook post alleging child death
A former standout track and field athlete from Alabama Christian Academy was arrested on Wednesday after fabricating a report that a Montgomery child was shot and killed over the weekend.
Bailey Simmons, 20, was charged with falsely reporting an incident, a misdemeanor, and was being held in the Montgomery City Jail. She reported the incident on her Facebook account, which has been taken down.
Police said her Facebook post was false after investigating the claim and declared it a waste of both time and resources.
"Early this morning, I heard a bunch of gunshots from across the street. I went over to check on the neighbors. A 12 year old boy that I have coached for a few years was hit by a stray bullet and died. Dev was a sweet young man, it breaks my heart he went this way. Stay safe y'all and pray for our streets," Simmons said in the Facebook post Saturday.
When asked, Simmons, who received a track and field scholarship to Texas A&M and most recently transferred to the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said the shooting happened on Madison Avenue.
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The Montgomery Advertiser reached out to Montgomery police on Saturday morning about the report of a shooting death, but MPD Lt. Stephen Lavender said police had "received no such reports." A few hundred people reacted to the post with some admonishing local media outlets for not reporting the incident.
After the weekend, MPD Lt. Regina Duckett then confirmed that the entire story was fabricated.
"MPD received no reports of shooting deaths over the weekend. After receiving multiple inquiries, MPD investigated a false Facebook post that reportedly told of the fatal shooting of a 12-year-old child. We identified and interviewed the individual who posted this false information, and that individual admitted that the post had been fabricated. This post has since been removed," Duckett said via email.
The Department of Public Safety confirmed the story by taking to Facebook to admonish the user for wasting MPD's time and resources.
"A false Facebook post supposedly telling about the shooting death of a Montgomery 12-year-old caused concern and confusion over the weekend. It also ate into MPD’s valuable time, as officers worked to track this information down. The bottom line: It never happened. Last night MPD located and interviewed the individual who posted this, and she admitted fabricating the whole thing. MPD is consulting with the DA’s Office, and we hope that anyone who’s active on social media will think long and hard before starting, or sharing, such a damaging false-news post. The post has been removed from Facebook," the Department of Public Safety's post read.