‘Sick joke’ prompted Fort Worth police to search for couple, woman says on Facebook
A photograph of a couple with a message asking for help found at a Stockyards bar may have been “some sort of sick joke,” the woman in the photo told Fort Worth police.
The message on the photo prompted Fort Worth detectives on Thursday to ask for help to locate and identify the couple because authorities did not know if someone was missing or if the report was a hoax.
On Friday, Fort Worth police said the couple had been located, identified and they were safe.
A woman commented on the Fort Worth Police Department Facebook page that she was the woman in the photo. She said she never wrote anything on the picture and didn’t place it in the tip jar of the Thirsty Armadillo in the Stockyards where it was found on Saturday.
The message on the back of the photo said, “HELP HE has abducted me,” according to a police call log.
Detectives interviewed the woman after authorities released information that they were searching for the couple.
In the Facebook post, the woman said the man was her boyfriend of seven months and they were very happy.
She said they took two different sets of pictures at a photo booth, and they apparently lost one.
“Someone (unsure of who) must have found it and wrote that on the back (maybe as some sort of sick joke?),” the woman posted.
The woman told police she was fine, her boyfriend was not abusive and she left willingly with him.
“This was all someone who found our picture and stirred up all this mess,” she wrote on Facebook. “We were just a couple enjoying our time at the Stockyards.”
