ST. GEORGE —Reports of a missing 11-year-old girl, coupled with an account provided by a young boy about an alleged murder, had emergency crews scrambling over the weekend.

And in the end, the young girl was found, and the young boy’s story turned out to be just that — a story.

St. George Police Officer Tiffany Mitchell said the incident was initially reported shortly after 1 p.m. Saturday when the St. George Communications Center received a 9-1-1 call after an 11-year-old boy told a family member he had been chased by a man while playing near the bike path alongside the Virgin River off Riverside Drive near 1450 East in St. George.

The minor reportedly told relatives that minutes before, he saw the same man place what appeared to be the body of a young girl into a duffel bag and throw the bag in the river.

The boy reportedly said after the suspect spotted him, the man gave chase and then grabbed him. The boy said he struggled with the suspect, tearing his pants in the process, and then he broke free and ran to a relative’s house and reported the alleged incident.

Officers responded to the residence and spoke to the boy about the account, which is when they noticed the child’s pants were torn and muddy. This appeared to be consistent with his account of the alleged attack, and he also provided a detailed description of his alleged attacker as well as a “very detailed account of what transpired near the river,” Mitchell said.

“Nothing in the boy’s account led officers to believe it wasn’t true,” she added.

Coincidentally, the description the boy provided of the body in the duffel bag bore several similarities to a report of an 11-year-old girl reported missing to the St. George Police Department several hours earlier.

In that case, Mitchell said, the child was described as having dark hair and brown eyes, and was last seen at school the previous day, and by 7 a.m. on Saturday, the child still had not returned home, so the family called police to report the young girl missing.

Six hours later, Mitchell said, police received the report allegedly involving the body of a murdered girl in a duffel bag that paralleled the description of the missing girl for whom officers were still searching, thus adding to the sense of urgency,  Mitchell said.

From there, the minor boy was taken to the Children’s Justice Center for a forensic interview, while additional resources and manpower were dispatched to the scene, including multiple officers, detectives and Washington County Sheriff’s deputies.

They were soon joined by a swift water rescue dive team and a ground team, while the Utah Department of Public Safety launched a Star 9  helicopter to provide aerial assistance.

The helicopter flew above the path of the Virgin River in search of the duffel bag, as well as for the suspect who had purportedly fled on foot, while multiple swift-water divers entered the river to conduct an underwater search.

Additional patrol officers and the bike patrol unit were called in to conduct an extensive ground search of the area, while the St. George Police Department sent an Incident Command unit to help process the scene — if needed.

“The seriousness of the report required multiple resources that were deployed very quickly,” Mitchell said.

Officers also initiated a neighborhood canvass of the homes located west of where the activity was taking place near the river, and according to one resident, who requested that his name be withheld, officers knocked on his door on Saturday afternoon saying they were looking for a suspect described as a male with dark hair and a beard who was wearing a black hoodie.

When he said he hadn’t seen anyone matching that description, he said the officers responded by advising him to call 911 if anyone matching that description was seen in the area and said the officers provided no further details on the nature of the inquiry.

The resident also said he suspected there was “something big going on by the river,” gauging from the number of police and emergency response vehicles that continued to fill the field near where the search was taking place.

In the meantime, the boy who reported the incident was transported to the Children’s Justice Center for a forensic interview, Mitchell said, during which his account “remained fairly consistent with what he had originally told police.”

But a number of discrepancies raised the detectives’ suspicions as they continued speaking with the boy. They decided to return to the scene off Riverside Drive so the boy could demonstrate how the events unfolded.

“It was at that point that the boy’s story fell apart,” said Mitchell, describing how the boy went on to tell officers that he made up the story and the whole report was false.

He explained that prior to the call, he was riding near the bike path when he crashed a family member’s scooter, and to avoid “getting into trouble” for crashing the scooter, Mitchell said, the boy purportedly made up the story, which set in motion the events the unfolded over the next seven hours.

The situation was even more serious since officers were actively searching for the 11-year-old girl who bore a striking resemblance to the “victim” in what turned out to be the boy’s fictitious account of an alleged murder.

“But the two are completely unrelated, and his was completely false,” said Mitchell, adding that shortly thereafter, the missing girl was located and returned safely to her family.

As for the second incident, Mitchell said there are no charges pending in the case and the identity of the boy is not being released since he is a minor.

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