Police Follow TV Tip, Seize Wrong Woman

The producers of the television series “America’s Most Wanted” boast of the show’s success at helping nab fugitives by re-creating crimes and broadcasting photographs of wanted criminals.

But if viewers continue to come up with tips for police based on mistaken identities, the producers could create a spinoff “reality” show: “Sorry, Wrong Suspect.”

The most recent case of mistaken identity occurred Monday night in North Hollywood when officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Los Angeles division, acting on a tip from a viewer, forced their way into an apartment. According to police, they were looking for a murder suspect known as “Sophia,” who had been featured on the television show.

Police kicked the door open when the woman inside, Birtukan Alemu, 26, refused to open the door, even after police identified themselves, according to Detective Andrew Monsue.

Monsue said Alemu was handcuffed while officers searched the apartment in the 5100 block of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and her car. After about an hour, police determined that Alemu was not the woman they were looking for.

Monsue apologized and told her that the department would pay for damage to the door. Monsue said Alemu was the “spit and image” of the woman being hunted, who, like Alemu, is from Ethiopia.

Jack Breslin, a spokesman for the Fox television program in Washington, said he was unaware of Monday’s incident in North Hollywood and he did not know who police were seeking.

But Breslin said that in February and August the program profiled a woman known as Sophie David, wanted by Los Angeles police for the fatal shooting of her estranged boyfriend, Fekade Ashine, in West Los Angeles on July 10, 1991.

David was described as 26 to 36 years old, 130 pounds, with brown eyes and black hair, who usually wears dark glasses and speaks English with a British accent, Breslin said. David has worked as a hairdresser and a nurse in the past, he said.

Breslin said David was from a prominent Ethiopian family and that her late father was a general in the Ethiopian army. Breslin said show officials have received information that David has left the country.

Profiles aired on the show have led to the arrests of 237 wanted criminals and the discovery of six missing children, Breslin said. But about a dozen people have also been detained by authorities, including about three who have been arrested, as a result of mistaken identities stemming from false tips, Breslin said.

“There have been frequent reports of this in the media, but if you look at the history of law enforcement, people have been detained for looking like somebody else,” Breslin said. “So it’s not necessarily the fault of ‘America’s Most Wanted’ or any other show.”

News accounts have reported such mistaken arrests in Georgia, Arizona, New York and Los Angeles.

The man arrested in Los Angeles, Robin John Delgado, has filed suit against the Police Department, FBI, and “America’s Most Wanted” for assault and battery, false imprisonment and emotional distress as a result of his arrest in February.

Three years ago, an actor dining out in Los Angeles was mistaken by restaurant employees for a suspected killer who had been featured on the show. After employees alerted police, the actor was briefly detained and released.

Alemu said in an interview that she is still suffering emotionally and has had trouble sleeping because of the experience.

“I am a woman. I am alone. I am not opening the door,” said Alemu, who has been in this country for four years and only moved into her apartment this month. “I was scared. I was really shaking.”

Alemu said that when she heard the police pounding on the door, she telephoned a friend in Studio City, who advised her not to open it.

Since then, she has asked him repeatedly to check the apartment door, said Alemu’s 24-year-old brother, Seifu, who shares the apartment with her.

Alemu said she was recently discharged from a hospital, where she was being treated for emotional problems caused by sexual harassment that she said she encountered in her job as a waitress.

“She was crying all night,” her brother said. “This has made her more sick.”