18-year-old Sumaya Thomas of North Liberty, Iowa was supposed to go on a blind date with a young man she had met on an online dating app. But by the time her date arrived at her abode to pick her up on the evening of June 16, Thomas had changed her mind. Did she tell him that to his face, like any normal, decent human being, apologizing for wasting his time and dashing his hopes? Oh noooo. Did she text him, the weenie’s way out? No. Did she just leave him on her doorstep, knocking and buzzing while she hid under the bed? No. Did she sneak out the back door? No, not that either.
Instead, Thomas called 911 and said her abusive ex- was outside harassing her because she was seven months pregnant with their child. She said she needed the police to get him off her property as he was threatening to “hit, punch, kick and stab her.”
Nice! A police car was dispatched, and when officers arrived they found an apparently calm, confused young man in the process of walking away. Upon being questioned about the situation, he explained that he had arrived to go on a date with the woman inside the house, and that he had only met her online a week ago.
The police affidavit states that “the conversation showed he was being honest and he really did just meet this female,” but Sumaya wouldn’t give up her cover story. She insisted he was really there to harm her after a two-year abusive relationship that had resulted in her pregnancy.
Sumaya had been busy while the police were on their way: she had deleted some texts with her date in case the police investigated. Eventually, though, Thomas admitted to police that she made the 911 call only because she got “cold feet” regarding the planned date and knew that the officers wouldn’t help her get out of the engagement if she told them the truth.
Stories like this, and by “like this” I mean stories demonstrating such abysmal character and dead ethics alarms along with throbbing cretinism, always raise the same questions in my mind. Such as…
- How does someone get this way? How was she raised? Who raised her? Wolves?
- Is she a sociopath? (They’re usually smarter than that.)
- By 18, wouldn’t she have had to learn that what she did to her poor date was cruel and socially unacceptable?
- Did she go to school? How did this kind of behavior not get extracted from her by education, discipline and socialization?
- Hasn’t she seen any movies? TV shows? Read books? Popular culture conveys basic ethics standards, at least sufficiently for any reasonably aware human being to learn that one doesn’t treat people like Sumaya did in this instance.
- How has she reached the age of 18 without, oh I don’t know, torturing puppies or setting someone on fire, thus warning the community that she was a menace?
- Would you hire someone whom you knew had behaved like this woman did even once? I sure wouldn’t: there are embezzlers and car thieves I would trust before I’d trust Sumaya Thomas .
She was charged with two misdemeanor counts of False Report of Indictable Offense to Public Entity, and one count of False Report – 911 call after her victim the innocent date was questioned for about an hour. I guess he should count himself as lucky: a date with Semaya might have turned into the sequel to “Baby Reindeer.”
There should be a national Broken Ethics Alarms Database so potential employers, neighbors and, yes, dates can be warned about the lurking Semayas out there. I’m not even certain that’s a hyperbole. Her conduct was literally unforgivable.
[ WordPress thinks I should tag this story “Clarence Thomas.” Good work, guys.]
Ethics Alarms 
is that the picture she used on the dating app? Putting that aside, she is 18 years old now meaning she was born in 2006 or thereabouts, and would have been 10 years old in 2016 with the coming of Trump. She was probably raised in the culture that says any and all accusations a woman makes need to be believed, no matter how ridiculous. After all, who lies about things like that? So, why not just make up a convenient lie to get this guy off her doorstep?
I know this family personally and it makes me very sad to see this. She is special needs and has the mind of a 12 yr old. But living as an adult. She is actually a very sweet and helpful person when being taken care of. But left to herself things often get confusing for her. I hate she is being portrayed like this.
You raise an interesting issue. If she is living by herself and as an adult, then she is accountable for her conduct. The guy she treated like that is a true victim. Who is responsible? Somebody has to be. If there is no one else, she has to be responsible. (And even a 12-year-old should know that what she did was wrong.)
I want to know if her blood tests positive for heavy metals.
Could she be mentally ill?
Regardless, I would certainly hope that the dating site would remove her profile and ban her from further use upon being informed of her shenanigans.
The scariest takeaway for me? The future which awaits the result of her alleged (manufactured?) pregnancy.
PWS
Well, with all the references in the story to “Long Dong Silver”…
Anyways, I feel super sorry for that young man. I would guess (or maybe I would hope) that he – much like the airline passenger that gets on a really rocky flight and then decides to just drive a car or take a boat – might consider the more old-school methods of meeting women at a bar or a church…any place where there’s a better chance that some of the crazy could be exposed ahead of time, before law enforcement is needed.
For the education/edification/entertainment of the group – and for that young man, should he visit here – I post the lyrics of Brad Paisley’s song “Online”…
I work down at the Pizza Pit
And I drive an old Hyundai
I still live with my mom and dad
I’m 5’3 and overweight
I’m a sci-fi fanatic
Mild asthmatic
Never been to second base
But there’s a whole ‘nother me
That you need to see
Go check out Myspace
‘Cause online I’m out in Hollywood
I’m 6’5 and I look damn good
I drive a Maserati
I’m a black belt in Karate
And I love a good glass of wine
It turns girls on that I’m mysterious
I tell ’em I don’t want nothing serious
‘Cause even on a slow day I can have a three way
Chat with two women at one time
I’m so much cooler online
So much cooler online
I get home, I kiss my mom
And she fixes me a snack
And I head down to my basement bedroom
And fire up my Mac
In real life, the only time I’ve
Ever even been to L.A.
Was when I got the chance with the marching band
To play tuba in the Rose Parade
Online I live in Malibu
I posed for Calvin Kline, I’ve been in GQ
I’m single and I’m rich
And I got a set of six pack abs that will blow your mind
It turns girls on that I’m mysterious
I tell ’em I don’t want nothing serious
‘Cause even on a slow day I can have a three way
Chat with two women at one time
I’m so much cooler online
Yeah I’m cooler online
When you got my kinda stats, it’s hard to get a date
Let alone a real girlfriend
But I grow another foot
And I lose a bunch of weight every time I log in
Online I’m out in Hollywood
I’m 6’5 and I look damn good
Even on a slow day, I can have a three way
Chat with two women at one time
I’m so much cooler online
Yeah I’m cooler online
Boy, I was really asleep at the metaphorical switch: of course that’s what happened here. This awful woman had a fake photo and profile. snagged a trusting guy, and lost her nerve when she had to finally show who she really was. None of that even occurred to me when a wrote the post. None of it absolves this creep in any way, but I still should have realized this.
I think this is, or is akin to, catfishing? Using a fake photo and identity to lure unsuspecting guys, usually to rip them off or shake them down.
The bar or church suggestion isn’t really that useful. Most of the young people don’t go to church. At a bar, the women have been drinking, and that leaves a man open to all kinds of legal action. Just approaching a woman at a bar awkwardly can result in you being filmed (without your knowledge) and slammed on social media as a creep. Even looking at a woman in public can get you cancelled. Look at videos of men who pull up next to a woman in a car and motion for her to roll her window down. She immediately films them, telling them that she has a boyfriend and that they are creeps. Then they tell her that she has a flat tire, or that she still has the gas pump hanging out of the fill tube, etc. There are a significant number of women that are just not nice people. Society has given them unprecedented power withe the ‘believe all women ‘ line and they do abuse it gleefully.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/16/joey-swolls-gym-creep-battle-divides-men-and-women/#!
Sheesh. See my comment in the following post about “toxic masculinity.” It’s evidently metastasized among third wave feminists, i.e. contemporary women. Ugh. I guy gets slammed for … approaching a girl? Good work, girls.
The date was saved from a rude awakening by that call to the police. If she had answered the door looking anything like the photo, he wold have been last seen running down the street, screaming. A version of “moral luck”?