Search over for woman who claimed she was shot while on phone

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- Police in Chicago and Springfield are no longer looking for a woman who touched off a frantic search by Sangamon County law enforcement agencies last month after she appeared to have been shot while on the telephone with her cell phone company.

"As far as we're concerned, it's a dead case," William Pittman, Springfield's assistant police chief in charge of investigations, said.

Though police initially said the call might have been a hoax, the emergency dispatchers who handled the incident were so distraught that counselors were brought in to talk to them.

Sangamon County authorities eventually determined the woman might have been in Chicago. On Friday, a Chicago Police Department spokesman said an investigation found no proof the woman was actually injured.

The woman apparently was using her cell phone to call a Cingular Wireless service center in Springfield on Oct. 8, when she suddenly said she had been shot by her husband. An employee transferred her call to the 911 emergency center, where personnel could hear her moaning for more than an hour until her phone went dead.

The woman had given a name and address to dispatchers, but the address was too muffled to understand. Police searched for a local woman with the same name -- even driving around with her relatives -- before discovering the call probably came from the Chicago area.