Man arrested after calling in false home invasion report

An Anchorage man has been arrested after calling in an apparently false report of a home invasion.

Alaska State Troopers arrested Joshua Dylan Vars, 32, at a home in Nikiski after investigating a call he made about a home invasion Tuesday morning. Upon arriving, the troopers couldn’t find any evidence of a home invasion and Vars was the only one there, according to an online dispatch.

Upon further investigation, troopers found that Vars was out on felony probation or parole for a charge of assault in the third degree on the conditions of not consuming controlled substances or possessing a firearm. He had a handgun and had used a controlled substance, according to the dispatch.

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“No signs of a home invasion were found at the residence and consumption of a controlled substance is suspected to be a factor,” the dispatch states.

Vars was taken to Wildwood Correctional Complex’s pretrial facility in Kenai and remanded on several probation or parole violations and charged with one count of misconduct involving weapons in the third degree, a class C felony, and one count of misconduct involving weapons in the fourth degree, a class A misdemeanor. He was scheduled to be arraigned at the Kenai Courthouse at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

The violation of probation charge is related to a 2012 case in Anchorage in which he was originally charged with 13 crimes, including kidnapping, assault in the third degree and coercion, but the majority of which were dismissed by the prosecution when he pleaded guilty to one charge of assault in the third degree in 2013.

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