Photo by Jon Anderson
Hoover Councilmen John Lyda and Curt Posey participate in a council meeting in the William J. Billingsley Council Chambers at Hoover City Hall in Hoover, Alabama, on Monday, Aug. 7, 2023.
The Hoover City Council on Monday night encouraged state lawmakers to amend state law to make the false reporting of a felony a Class C felony itself.
The resolution passed by the council was in response to the 25-year-old Hoover woman whom police said falsely reported being kidnapped on the side of Interstate 459 on July 13 and held against her will for two days.
The woman, Carlee Russell, later admitted to police she lied about being kidnapped and seeing a toddler wandering along the side of the interstate in a diaper before the alleged kidnapping, police Chief Nick Derzis said.
Authorities on July 28 charged Russell, now 26 years old, with two misdemeanors: falsely reporting an incident and making a false report to law enforcement after she returned home on July 15. Both are Class A misdemeanors that carry a penalty of up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $6,000 upon conviction.
Class C felonies in Alabama, with no prior felonies, carry a penalty of between 366 days and 10 years in jail and up to $15,000 in fines. People with prior felonies can receive up to 99 years or life in prison and a fine of up to $60,000, depending on the number of prior felonies.
Russell turned herself into the Hoover Jail on July 28 and was released after paying bond.
Derzis said then he was frustrated that these were the only charges that could be filed against Russell due to the amount of time and resources spent trying to find her and investigating her false report and the level of panic and alarm her report caused the community.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall also attended a July 28 press conference regarding the charges against Russell and said his office would be assisting with the prosecution of Russell in Hoover Municipal Court.
Derrick Murphy, chairman of the Hoover City Council’s Public Safety Committee, on Monday night said Hoover police and other law enforcement agencies put a lot of manpower into the search for Russell and the investigation into the possibility of a missing toddler.
Derzis and Hoover police take those kinds of reports extremely seriously and will continue to do so, and people who make reports like that should do the same, Murphy said.
New state Rep. Mike Shaw, a former Hoover councilman, and fellow new state Rep. Leigh Hulsey, who also represents parts of Hoover, were present at Monday night’s council meeting and said they will be filing a bill like the one the Hoover council is requesting.
Hulsey said she and Shaw plan to sit down with Derzis and Nathaniel Ledbetter, the speaker of the House of Representatives, this month to discuss the matter. They already have had preliminary conversations with the Alabama attorney general’s office as well, she said.
“Right now, they’re looking at stuff to make sure it’s the right verbiage,” Hulsey said.
