INCLINE - A high school senior prank Monday led law enforcement agencies throughout Northern Nevada on a wild goose chase that ended when local officers found the reportedly kidnapped girl safe in Incline Village.
Listening to a scanner report from Douglas County at 5 a.m., Lt. Gregg Lubbe of the Washoe County Sheriff's Office Incline Village Substation heard reports of a kidnapped girl.
Law enforcement officials from Carson City, Douglas County, Lyon County and Storey County responded to reports of a kidnapping in the wilderness east of Carson City.
It began when the girl attended an annual unofficial party for high school seniors with her boyfriend, Lubbe said, in the Deer Run Road area.
When the girl and her boyfriend left the area at about midnight, it was dark, and they piled some of their belongings into the back of a car with others' gear. The girl didn't notice her cell phone had fallen out of her bag.
They went to her boyfriend's parents' Incline Village home, but his parents were in Reno.
After the girl dropped her cell phone, a young man picked it up and called her brother, reporting she'd been kidnapped. Her brother called their mother.
When their mother called her daughter's cell phone number, a man answered, so she asked him where her daughter was.
"In the trunk," the prankster told her.
When Lubbe overheard the call and checked on the information, he recognized the name of one of the teens.
The girl was found at her boyfriend's parents' house.