The 911 caller in rural Tennessee told a dispatcher on Oct. 18 that he had been injured when a bear chased him off a cliff and into water. But when emergency workers arrived, the authorities said, they found something entirely different.
There, near a bridge on the scenic Cherohala Skyway, which runs through the town of Tellico Plaines, they found the body of a man who they said had been killed, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. He had the identification of someone named Brandon Kristopher Andrade, the name given by the 911 caller.
But soon, they said, they learned that the body was not that of Mr. Andrade, that Mr. Andrade’s I.D. had been stolen, and that a parolee with a long criminal history named Nicholas Wayne Hamlett, 45, had used that identity.
On Friday, Sheriff Tommy J. Jones II of Monroe County said that a warrant had been issued for Mr. Hamlett’s arrest on a first-degree murder charge and that he was on the run. He is considered “armed and dangerous,” according to a statement.
As of Friday, the authorities had not identified the dead man, nor had they said how he had been killed. They planned to release a sketch of the man to help identify him.
A phone message on Monday seeking further comment from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office was not immediately returned, nor was one left with a man named Brandon Kristopher Andrade.
The authorities said Mr. Hamlett also used a fake name when he spoke to officials from another Tennessee county after the 911 call. He is believed to have fled his home in Tennessee, authorities added.
Mr. Hamlett’s criminal history includes prison terms for assault, forgery and theft, according to court records.
The Tennessee case is not the only recent one in which someone called the police blaming a bear for an attack that turned out to be a homicide.
Earlier this month near Bozeman, Mont., a person called the authorities to report that a man had been found dead in his tent, apparently the victim of a bear attack. But the authorities later said that they believed the camper was the victim of a brutal homicide. They added that an autopsy showed that he sustained “multiple chop wounds.”
No arrests have been made in that case.
The post A Caller Told 911 a Bear Had Chased Him Off a Cliff. The Police Say It Was Murder. appeared first on New York Times.
