A Metairie man, unwilling to tell his girlfriend that he had been “blow(ing) off steam” in New Orleans all night, made up an elaborate story for Kenner police that he had been kidnapped from the Pontchartrain Center early Saturday morning. After being confronted with inconsistencies in his account, Adam Joseph White, 27, admitted to filing the false Kenner police report and was booked with criminal mischief, a misdemeanor.
White alleged that between 1:30 and 2 a.m. Saturday an unknown handgun-wielding man approached him in the parking lot of the Pontchartrain Center, where he worked.
White said the man asked him for a cigarette and raised his shirt to show him a handgun with a black handle.
The man forced White into his own vehicle, a Dodge Charger, and forced him to drive to multiple locations in Orleans Parish, White told police. White made up numerous characters and plotlines for his story, telling police that he stopped at the suspect’s girlfriend’s residence at one point and met up with the suspect’s cousin.
White told police that he didn’t try to escape because he was afraid. He said the suspect made him drink whiskey and the suspect’s cousin at one point forced him to take a white pill.
He said that he managed to escape on Galvez Street in New Orleans while the suspect and his cousin, who frequently argued throughout the incident, were fighting.
White’s girlfriend urged him to contact police when he got to their Transcontinental Drive home, and Kenner police began investigating about 8:45 a.m., said Lt. Wayne McInnis, Kenner Police Department spokesman.
“He made up the story about being kidnapped,” the police report said, “because he did not know how to explain his failure to come straight home after work to his live-in girlfriend.”
McInnis said he doesn’t know the amount of money the Police Department spent investigating White’s false report, but said multiple police officers were tasked to assist in the investigation, including a standby detective who was called to the scene and a crime scene tech who dusted White’s vehicle for prints and took photographs.
White was charged $220 for the misdemeanor arrest and released from Kenner lockup, but he could not be reached by phone Tuesday. McInnis said he didn’t know about the status of White’s relationship with his girlfriend, but a woman who answered the phone at a number associated with the Transcontinental Drive address said White no longer lived there. She declined to comment about the incident.
