Man spends 30 days in prison wrongly accused in Langhorne attack. Now accuser is in jail
A 20-year-old Bristol Township woman who claimed she was attacked at a Middletown shopping center has been charged with making up the incident, which kept an Bucks County man incarcerated for 31 days.
Anjela Borisova Urumova called 911 on the evening of April 16 claiming that a man attacked her as she got out of her car to go grocery shopping at Redner's supermarket in Langhorne Square Shopping Center off Lincoln Highway, police said.
Urumova claimed the man attacked her from behind, pulled down her pants, punched her in the face and then tried to carry her toward his pickup truck before she broke free and he got back into his truck, which was parked near hers.
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A pickup truck matching one Urumova described the attacker as driving was captured by license plate readers a quarter-mile away minutes before the attack, according to police.
The day after the alleged assault, Middletown police showed Urumova photos of eight men and she identified the pickup truck owner as one of two potential suspects.
She claimed she was “60% sure” the man she identified was her attacker, according to a probable cause affidavit for Urumova. The suspect she identified also drove a pickup like the one she described the attacker as driving, police said.
Urumova later confirmed the mug shot of the suspect was “definitely the subject who attacked her,” the affidavit said.
The man was arrested the next day on multiple felony charges including attempted rape and kidnapping. He remained incarcerated on $1 million bail until he was released on May 17 after charges against him were withdrawn. He was publicly identified by authorities.
Urumova’s story began to unravel shortly after the arrest, when Bucks County Detectives and the Middletown Police Department received information from the man’s family that “warranted further investigation,” according to an affidavit of probable cause.
Middletown police collected and reviewed available surveillance video from multiple business owners in the areas of the reported attack.
The video footage showed Urumova’s pickup truck in the parking lot around the time of the alleged attack, but did not show the man’s pickup truck or any similar pickup trucks traveling through the path Urumova claimed the vehicle took to exit the shopping center, the affidavit said.
A county detective conducted a forensic review of Urumova’s cellphone, which showed all the data associated with a Snapchat app had been deleted from the phone before law enforcement received the device for examination, the affidavit said.
The investigation found multiple inconsistencies and contradictory information with Urumova’s account of the attack, authorities said.
When detectives confronted her with the findings on May 17, Urumova admitted making up the entire incident and confirmed no assault occurred, according to the affidavit.
She told detectives that she did not know the man she accused. She targeted the suspect and his pickup truck because she had seen them both previously at the shopping center, and described the man as “creepy,” according to the affidavit.
When detectives asked her if she planned to tell the truth at any point, Urumova replied that she planned to fess up at some point before the man’s preliminary hearing, which was scheduled for June.
“Urumova provided an excuse to law enforcement as to why she falsely reported the attack. The excuse had nothing to do with any prior interaction” with the suspect, the affidavit said.
Urumova was arraigned on seven misdemeanor charges including multiple counts of filing false reports and tampering with evidence on May 20. She was sent to Bucks County Correctional Center in lieu of $30,000 bail. She had no legal representative listed, according to the docket.
Reporter Jo Ciavaglia can be reached at jciavaglia@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Woman who claimed she was attacked in Redner's parking lot arrested
