Authorities have charged a Brooksville man they say fled from a deputy in his girlfriend's car, crashed it into a telephone pole and claimed he'd been carjacked.
Jack David Williams, 26, was arrested last Wednesday and charged with making a false report of the commission of a crime and fleeing to elude.
The events happened early on on April 10, starting when a deputy spotted a 2013 Dodge Avenger speeding on Sunshine Grove Road in Brooksville and tried to pull it over. The Dodge fled the scene, and the deputy aborted his pursuit, the Hernando County Sheriff's Office said.
Soon after, the deputy saw a flash of light appeared from the west end of Montour Street. He and another deputy drove to the area and located the Dodge crashed into a telephone pole with no one inside or around.
Meanwhile, the car's owner, Tiffany Jenkins, called the sheriff's office to report that her boyfriend, Williams, had been driving her car and had told her he'd been carjacked. Deputies went to Williams' home and met with the couple.
Williams claimed he'd taken Jennings' car to a Circle K in Spring Hill and that when he pulled into the lot, a man dressed in all black threatened to shoot him if he did not take him to Barclay Avenue and Cortez Boulevard. When deputies told Williams that they were going to review surveillance footage, he revised his story to say the carjacker had approached him before he pulled into the lot, deputies say.
Williams went on to say he complied with the carjacker's demand and then got out of the vehicle at Irving Street and Barclay Avenue. The carjacker supposedly fled in the vehicle and crashed it.
But as detectives continued to question his account, Williams admitted his story was a lie, the sheriff's office said.