A man who concocted a false story about being attacked with a baseball bat could face charges, according to the Commerce Police Department.
Officers responded to Don’s Used Cars, Maysville Road, where a 28-year-old white male with blood all over his shirt said two men attacked him with a baseball bat at the Flying J travel center, Maysville Road, knocked him out and stole his wallet, phone and vehicle.
According to the “victim,” he’d loaned his ex-girlfriend a vehicle about a month earlier and had been trying to get it back for two weeks. He said she called and told him it was at the Flying J, broken down. When he arrived and met her, he said, two men came out of the woods and attacked him with a baseball bat and kicked him in the side and face, whereupon he passed out. When he awakened, he said, they were gone, along with his vehicle, wallet and phone.
A friend of the victim called to say he had picked up the vehicle at the Unity Church Road residence of the ex-girlfriend and one of the alleged attackers, so the officer, accompanied by a deputy, went to that address, where they found the two suspects.
They told a different story. They said the fight actually took place at a residence off Wayne Poultry Road, Pendergrass, and that the alleged victim was the aggressor. The man denied using a bat and claimed that the victim had made numerous threats over the recent past, indicating he had a gun.
The officer talked to a manager at the travel center, who told him that video footage of the time when the incident allegedly happened did not show any of the vehicles that the victim claimed were present.
The officer went to the Athens hospital where the man was being treated, at which time the alleged victim admitted that the fight “happened in the country.” He said he “wasn’t supposed to be there” at the Flying J and came up with the alternate location because he was afraid of losing his job.
The officer warned him that he might be charged with giving false information to police.
