Free Republic

Alabama woman Carlee Russell has been charged with two misdemeanors after police say she launched a false police search by staging her own abduction, officials announced Friday. Russell, 25, of Hoover, turned herself in Friday and faces two misdemeanor charges of false reporting to law enforcement and falsely reporting an incident, local police said. Both are punishable by up to a year in jail. Her total bond was set at $2,000. She posted bail Friday afternoon and was released from custody.

Here's the "explanation," which is near the end of the story: When a story about a possible crime sparks national attention to the extent this one did, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The reactions are informed not only by the facts of the case, but filtered through broader contexts that exist outside the particulars of the incident. And those responses can tell us a lot about the culture in which we live. The public concern about Russell’s case was driven in part by the understanding that Black women rarely receive the same amount of attention that white women get...

The owner of the Woodhouse spa in Birmingham told The Post that she’s been canned, and that her steaming co-workers are “pissed” about their former colleague’s increasingly suspect kidnapping account. Owner Stuart Rome said his staffers were stunned after hearing of Russell’s purported disappearance and did everything in their power to help bring her home.

Police initially believed Russell and the child were located when a 911 caller (later revealed to be Russell’s sister-in-law) said a female was “screaming with a child” on Atkins Trimm Lane – a short distance from where Russell’s car was abandoned. At the 18:57 mark of Hoover 911 dispatch audio, an officer asks, “Where exactly is that call coming from?” Another officer responded that the 911 caller’s cell phone “is pinging in that location” on Atkins Trimm Lane.