Wichita mom who lied about toddler’s welfare will pay $3K for wasting police time
A Wichita mom who wasted police resources when she lied about her child’s father endangering their 2-year-old daughter on Father’s Day in 2019 has to reimburse the city for at least some of the time officers spent investigating her false report.
A Sedgwick County judge has ordered Ronetta Ann Clement to pay the city of Wichita $3,000, in addition to serving a year on probation, for concocting a story about her child’s father threatening to kill their daughter and himself when she tried to retrieve the girl after a scheduled visit on June 16, 2019.
Police determined the report was fake after officers spent 117 hours working on the case, authorities said at the time of Clement’s June 2019 arrest for interfering with law enforcement.
The false report led the Wichita Police Department to make a public plea for help locating the girl and her father when nothing was actually wrong.
Court records say Clement later admitted to police that she had fabricated the tale so she could get the child back after a visit that had lasted since Mother’s Day and tried to cover up her lies by deleting daily conversations she had with the father by phone.
Clement, 37, pleaded guilty to an amended misdemeanor charge of interfering with law enforcement in August ahead of her jury trial and was immediately sentenced to six months in jail. The judge then suspended the jail sentence, placed her on probation for a year and ordered the restitution payments.
Clement will pay part of the $3,000 to the city in $100 installments and the rest with her tax refund, court records say. Her first payment was due Sept. 1.
This story was originally published September 14, 2021 at 4:44 PM.
