ST. GEORGE — A dozen officers responded Saturday to a report of an armed robbery off River Road only to learn it was a false report made by a 911 caller who needed a ride to Provo.
St. George Consolidated Communications Center received a report shortly after 3 p.m. involving an armed robbery near the intersection of South River Road and Foremaster Drive in St. George.
According to charging documents filed with the court, the 911 caller told emergency dispatch a suspect pointed a shotgun at him and robbed him of $20 and then fled west on Foremaster towards River Road on foot. He also said the suspect was wearing a blue shirt and brown pants.
Because the report involved imminent danger to the public, as well as the risk of serious bodily injury or death to the victim, the officer wrote, “twelve officers with the St George Police Department responded to the area to locate the alleged suspect.”
After responding officers negotiated their way through heavy traffic with emergency lights and sirens activated, the 911 call was terminated when the first patrol officer arrived on scene to begin collecting information while the other units began a canvass of the area.
The caller gave a different clothing description to the first responding officers and also said, according to the report, the suspect used a handgun during the robbery, instead of the shotgun, as initially reported to emergency dispatch.
The caller went on to describe the firearm allegedly used in the commission of the alleged robbery as a gun similar to an officer’s duty weapon. The caller was then identified as David Michael Bowman, who told officers he was from Provo.
After noticing several discrepancies in the caller’s account, the officer looked into any prior police interactions with the complainant, which is when they found a report from 2022 involving the same 911 caller who reported a robbery that occurred “at nearly the exact location as the robbery currently being reported.”
Officers involved in the call from two years ago were unable to verify the information as reported by the 911 caller, and they obtained video footage that showed there was no interaction between the caller or anyone else.
Law enforcement explained to Bowman that “a significant number of officers were out looking for the suspect,” and should they encounter him, the officer continued, then police units would likely conduct a high risk stop at gunpoint.
When confronted with the inconsistencies, as well as the extensive police response and the previous unfounded call, the suspect said he had called in to report the robbery because he needed to get back to his family in Provo but could not provide the address to where his family lived.
The officer also indicated that Bowman has had “multiple prior convictions for making false police report.”
The suspect was arrested and booked into jail in Washington County facing a second-degree felony count of a false emergency report involving injury or death. He also faces one count of providing false information to a police officer, a misdemeanor.
The case was forwarded to the Washington County Attorney’s Office to be reviewed for charges and Bowman is being held in jail without bail.
This is the second recent incident involving allegations of making a false report to police in less than a month.
On April 29, officers were dispatched to the 800 block of St. George Boulevard on a report of an attempted kidnapping involving a suspect who had grabbed a woman and was attempting to force her into his vehicle.
When the vehicle was stopped, however, the 911 caller was spotted by officers near the scene and when they questioned her, she denied making the call and said “she had nothing to do with it.”
The woman initially denied calling 911 but then “changed her story” and said she called because her friend “did try to kidnap her, but after she called 911, she was worried about getting him in trouble,” and then later, she reportedly changed her story again.
As it turned out, the woman was suspected of calling 911 to report the alleged kidnapping as a means to divert officers away from her location to avoid being arrested on an unrelated incident, according to police.
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