RALEIGH -- A Johnston County woman who sent police on a global manhunt after she lied about her son vanishing at a flea market in Smithfield could spend up to five years in prison.
Rosnah Hassan Thomason, 43, pleaded guilty Monday to a federal charge of making false statements to law enforcement officers in May 2008 when she reported that 3-year-old Roji Davenport disappeared while she loaded produce in her car.
In truth, the boy wasn't her son. And, at the time she reported him missing, he was on a flight to Japan with his biological father, Thomason's brother. Thomason had sent the boy along on the first leg of the trip the day before she reported him missing, according to court records.
"The emergency reporting system needs to be taken seriously," said George E.B. Holding, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina. "When a person reports a false emergency, it takes from those in need of valuable manpower and precious time while using resources already stretched tight."
Thomason also could be fined up to $250,000. She is expected to be sentenced in May.
The boy's real name is Mohammad Haziq Hassan, and it's not clear why Thomason reported him missing. In one version of a story offered to police in May 2008, Thomason said her brother forced her to turn the boy over and had threatened her family if she failed. Her brother, Kamarudin Hassan, later told police that the boy was his son and that his sister had refused to return him after an extended visit in the United States.
Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation met the boy and Hassan at an airport in Japan. Hassan provided passports and other documentation to verify he was the boy's father; later a DNA test confirmed the child was his and not Thomason's, according to court documents.
The family's private dispute became a public debacle. When Thomason called police to report the boy missing, police shut down the Brightleaf flea market. They searched the cars of shoppers and looked for the boy in the nearby Neuse River.
Agents across the country got involved, as did dozens of Johnston County residents, who took to the streets handing out fliers bearing the boy's picture.
