Created: 9/29/2005 9:09:46 AM 
DELRAY BEACH, FL (AP) -- Former baseball star Darryl Strawberry was charged with filing a false police report after investigators watching a gas station surveillance video saw him drive off in a different sport utility vehicle than the one he reported stolen, The Palm Beach Post reported on its Web site Thursday.
Strawberry told a detective Wednesday that he lied when he reported on Sept. 17 that his rental SUV, a silver Nissan Murano, was stolen from a Delray Beach gas station. But in a surveillance video of the gas station viewed by investigators, Strawberry appeared to be the passenger in a Land Rover driven by a woman, police said.
The video also showed him purchasing items in the station's convenience store, then getting back into the vehicle and leaving, according to police.
Strawberry, 43, was charged with filing a false police report, and is scheduled to appear in court Oct. 27. Strawberry told The Palm Beach Post that he "didn't want to make a public thing out of it."
Detective Nicole Guerriero told the newspaper that she spoke to a tipster who said Strawberry's SUV was behind a Lake Worth sports bar, where police later found it.
According to a police report, the woman who allegedly left with the vehicle said she met Strawberry at a motel and he gave her the keys to his SUV, which she turned over to authorities.
"He didn't say what happened to the vehicle," Guerriero said. "Somehow it got into someone else's possession." A phone message left early Thursday for a Delray Beach Police spokesman wasn't immediately returned.
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