Teenager Falsely Claims She Was Kidnapped And Thrown From Moving Car

Authorities are closing an investigation of an 18-year-old teenager's claim she was abducted along a road and held hostage for 16 hours, saying it never happened.

Hayley Turner allegedly left her home on Thursday evening to run an errand, and shortly after told a friend over the phone she was pulling over her vehicle to check on a man who was lying in a ditch.

"Seconds later, Hayley told her friend, 'he has a gun,'" and the call was disconnected.

On Friday, as the search for teenager intensified, Turner's family told the station the woman is fine physically, but had struggled with some emotional issues this year.


Turner was found on a porch about 45 miles from where she allegedly vanished, according to NBC.

A police detective and an FBI agent re-interviewed Hayley Turner Sunday and "determined that the incident did not take place."

The department says it's forwarding a report to the county prosecutor's office for review. Turner could be charged for filing a false police report.

So why did Hayley Turner make up her own kidnapping? Is this even a thing? Maybe so according to The Stir.

If Turner truly made up her own kidnapping, she wouldn't be the first. In 2012, 16-year-old Kara Alongi posted on Twitter that "someone" was in her house and to call 911. Security cameras later caught her waiting at a train station.

In May, 16-year-old Ankita Lavender called both her ex-boyfriend and father to say she was being kidnapped. It later emerged that she had made the whole thing up to get her ex's sympathy.

So why on Earth do young women do this kind of thing?

"In general, this is a symptom of extremely low self-esteem and the need for attention, even if it's negative attention," says psychologist Bryn Collins. "It's often to get sympathy from a boy or parents."

While young men have been known to fake their own kidnappings (one allegedly did it to avoid telling parents about a bad grade), young women seem more prone to it. Says Collins: "Young men tend to act out externally -- they get into fights, get a tattoo on the face. Young women tend to act out internally, they might become promiscuous or anorexic."

Of course, Collins notes that faking your own kidnapping could also be a sign of a "big time psychological issue," but in general, it's an "attention-seeking device."