The story seemed a bit far-fetched: A frantic-sounding 25-year-old woman on Tuesday spun a yarn about a desperate stranger with a gun who got in her car and said he needed $20,000. So the two drove around the county trying to get money, but the gunman got nervous and scared and hopped out of the victim’s car somewhere in Deltona. The tall tale resulted in more than two dozen officers from four different law enforcement agencies mobilizing to help investigate the incident and search for the suspect. When it was all over, the woman -- Stacie Zuver -- ended up in jail after she finally admitted to Volusia County Sheriff’s investigators that she made up the entire story. Her reason for fabricating the episode: Zuver said she wanted to get her boyfriend to pay more attention to her.
The Sheriff’s Office was first notified of the incident at 11:51 a.m. on Tuesday from a woman in Ohio who works with Zuver’s mother. The mother had received a distress call from Zuver saying she was in trouble and needed her to wire a large sum of money. The mother then relayed the information to a co-worker, who phoned the Sheriff’s Office to report the incident. Zuver initially said that she had parked in a shopping plaza in Daytona Beach when she was accosted by the armed stranger. The Sheriff’s Office launched a search, but it was complicated by the fact that the victim wasn’t sure of the exact location where the incident took place. At first, she said that she was in Daytona Beach when she encountered the gunman. But then she later said it was actually in Port Orange. Zuver said she drove around trying to find a location where she could have money wired to her, and eventually headed to the Deltona area because she knew of a grocery store there where she could have the funds sent. But then she said the gunman got scared and bolted from her car in the 2600 block of Delaware Road in Deltona and took off running. The victim then drove to the Orange City Police Department at about 12:25 p.m. to seek help. She later returned to Deltona to show deputies where the gunman had supposedly dashed from her car and also gave a vivid physical description of the suspect.
Zuver’s story prompted the Sheriff’s Office to mount a wide-scale search for the suspect, with numerous patrol and traffic deputies and a K-9 unit. A Sheriff’s Office helicopter also was dispatched to the scene to aid with the search from the sky, and a crime scene investigator was called out to process Zuver’s car for clues. Meanwhile, Daytona Beach and Port Orange officers were dispatched to two different plazas to see if any exterior surveillance cameras captured the supposed encounter with the armed man. While all of that was going on, Sheriff’s investigators continued to interview Zuver in an effort to elicit additional details about the incident. But what investigators discovered were inconsistencies in her story. First, the location kept changing. The next thing that changed was the reason why she was supposedly in the Port Orange area in the first place. She initially told investigators that until about two weeks ago, she had worked as an event planner for Disney World and was trying to generate additional business in the hopes of getting her job back. But investigators were suspicious when she was unable to provide contact information for Disney or her previous supervisor there. She eventually admitted that she hadn’t worked there in more than a year, and then later acknowledged making up the carjacking story. In total, it’s estimated that Wednesday’s law enforcement response cost approximately $4,700. Zuver, meanwhile, was taken to jail Wednesday night, charged with making a false report to law enforcement. She has since been released on $500 bond.
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