PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A Bristol Township woman who falsely accused a random stranger of trying to kidnap and rape her will spend at least 45 days behind bars.
Anjela Urumova, 20, is sentenced to 1 1/2 to 23 months in Bucks County Correctional Facility after pleading guilty to false alarm to a public safety agency and related charges.
Last April, Urumova called police from the parking lot of the Langhorne Square Shopping Center, saying a man grabbed her in the parking lot, punched her in the face, and tried to drag her to his truck while pulling down her pants.
Police traced the truck to Daniel Pierson of Yardley, and arrested him in front of his wife and kids.
Pierson spent 31 days in Bucks County Correctional Facility, before detectives questioned Urumova about inconsistencies in her story. She admitted she’d never met Pierson, and he’d never touched her.
“I'm incredibly grateful for the work that the law enforcement did in this case to get to the bottom of what happened,” said prosecutor Kristin McElroy, “but it can't change the fact that a man spent 31 days sleeping in a cell for a crime he didn't commit.”
Urumova’s lawyer asked for probation, arguing she had no prior record, and has been getting treatment for mental health issues.
The judge, however, said Urumova should spend time behind bars — and told Pierson he couldn’t imagine what he and his family went through as he spent a month behind bars for something in which he had absolutely nothing to do.
“I mean, his children watched him be arrested, and that's a memory kids are never going to forget,” said McElroy. “As his honor pointed out, it's hard to prove a negative of, how do you get that explanation out there when it just fundamentally did not happen? This is a man who didn't even know this woman and was being accused of this.”
False claims of rape are extremely rare, McElroy added, and she hopes this doesn’t keep other women from coming forward in legitimate assault cases.