COLUMBUS – In what prosecutors are calling one of the strangest scams they have seen, an East Side woman is accused of plunging a knife into her own torso to try to bilk Ohio’s crime victim assistance fund out of thousands of dollars.
Nichole Childers is wanted on charges of providing false information to mislead a public official and instigating a false alarm and may be charged with a felony count of tampering with evidence, according to a release from Columbus City Attorney Richard Pfeiffer’s office, which by law does not prosecute felonies.
Childers, 39, first walked into the emergency room lobby of an East Side hospital with a stab wound, claiming she was supposed to meet someone to exchange a cell phone and was waiting in her car when two male teenagers approached her.
She claimed that one of the suspects stole $240 and a cell phone out of her purse while the other reached through her car window and stabbed her in the stomach.
Interviews, cell phone records, DNA testing, fingerprinting, and other forensic analysis led investigators to determine that Childers, whose last known address was on Denmark Road, authorities determined that she stabbed herself in the parking lot of the hospital with a knife she had stolen from a relative and made up the story of the attack.
Her application for approximately $8,000 from the Ohio Attorney General’s Crime Victim Compensation program was ultimately denied.