Fake armed robbery inspires real one

    Murphy – A rare armed robbery in Cherokee County early Friday morning may have been conjured up from a social media panic over an imaginary one the previous day.
    At 5 a.m. Friday, a man in a black mask entered the Waffle House on U.S. 64 brandishing a handgun and demanding money. He took the cash, then fled toward the back of the restaurant into a nearby wooded area.
    Lt. Joe Wood of the Cherokee Sheriff’s Department said there were leads to a suspect, but no arrest was made before the Cherokee Scout’s press time Tuesday.
    Sheriff Derrick Palmer said Monday that such armed robberies are few and far between in Cherokee County. Oddly enough, a county woman was arrested Thursday after she allegedly made a false police report, sparking an online panic on Facebook about a supposed armed robbery.
    Andrea Bernadette Wilcox, 53, of Hiwassee Dam, was arrested on charges of filing a false report to a police station and misuse of 911. On Thursday morning, Wilcox posted on Facebook that she was robbed at gunpoint by multiple assailants.
    “I was on my way to work this morning at 5 a.m.!!! Got at the stop sign coming out of Hiwassee Dam Access Road there was a white van stopped in front of me too (sic) men got out with mask on in all black with guns!!! They robbed me just letting everyone know keep your eyes open and your doors locked at all times!!! And take care of your kids tonight!!!” the punctuation-less post read.
    Around 4 p.m., the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook page posted that no armed robbery had been committed, and they were not looking for any suspects. That post was shared more than 250 times. Four hours later, the sheriff’s office posted that Wilcox had been arrested.
    “A lot of things did not look right,” Palmer said. “She said the guy had a foreign accent, which is unusual in the Hiwassee Dam area, and she could not tell us what kind of accent it was. She seemed very calm about everything for someone who was robbed by two men with guns, who took all her money and threatened to shoot her.
    “It just didn’t add up.”
    Palmer said Wilcox did not tell investigators she had been at Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River Casino & Hotel the previous day and lost $700 – the same amount the imaginary hoods were alleged to have taken. Wilcox did not respond for requests for comment on the so-called robbery and later deleted her Facebook account altogether.
    Palmer said it was his opinion that the fake robbery, and its subsequent blowup on Facebook, gave the actual perpetrator the idea for his real heist.
    “It seemed like a bit of a copycat thing,” he said. “The guy probably figured he would do it the same way and it would get blamed on the guys who did the other one. I don’t think he saw the post that it was fake.”
    One positive thing to come out of the false police report was how much care and concern local residents showed their neighbor online when they thought she had been robbed.