In December, Auburn city police reported they were investigating the robbery of a woman who had allegedly been pushed from a car by a male acquaintance, who forcibly took more than $50 cash from her.

Now police have charged the woman with fabricating the story about the robbery to cover up a drug deal gone bad.

Eugenia N. Morris, 27, of 84 Wall St., Auburn, was charged by the Auburn Police Department Tuesday with the misdemeanors of third-degree falsely reporting and false written statement.

“It turned out to be a drug deal gone awry,” said APD Detective Jeffery Mead, the case's investigator.

The path that led to the lie, according to Mead, began with the weekend's multiple purchases by Morris and her boyfriend of more crack cocaine than they could afford. When their dealer showed up on Tuesday, Dec. 19, to get his money, he sold them a wax confection he passed as crack as a means to recoup his debt, Mead said.

Morris had been driven to an ATM machine by the dealer where she withdrew money to pay him for the fraudulent crack, but as he drove her back to her residence, she realized they'd been had and called her boyfriend on her cell, Mead said.

When the dealer pulled up to Morris' residence, the boyfriend was outside with a knife threatening the dealer, Mead said. The dealer drove off, as Morris and he struggled over the money withdrawn from the ATM, Mead said.

Morris jumped out of the dealer's pickup on Seymour Street when it was going about 30 mph. She reported the incident as a robbery to police, Mead said.

Mead said he was able to verify the dealer's version of events because of the correspondence to his story of multiple ATM transactions, in which the dealer drove either Morris or her boyfriend to get payment for the crack he was selling to them.

Arrest warrants are still pending for the boyfriend and the dealer. Mead is negotiating with the dealer's lawyer to turn himself in.

Morris testified in a December 2004 Cayuga County jury trial against a Rochester man, Shabazz Vasquez, who she reportedly connected with an undercover Auburn police officer to compete a drug sale. Vasquez was convicted on four counts related to selling crack cocaine within city limits.

Staff writer Amaris Elliott-Engel can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or at amaris.elliot-engel@lee.net