A former MBTA driver faces an October trial on charges that she staged an armed robbery, lied about it to police, and then claimed more than $7,000 in worker’s compensation funds, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said today.

NANCY PARKER (D.O.B. 10/12/58) of Burlington was arraigned Friday in Suffolk Superior Court on charges of worker’s compensation fraud, making a false police report, and misleading an investigator, a subsection of the state’s witness intimidation statute.

Assistant District Attorney David McGowan told the court that Parker was driving an MBTA bus on Route 111 in the area of Garfield Avenue and Exeter Street in Chelsea on the afternoon of Oct. 2, 2007, when she made the initial false report.

When MBTA Transit Police – along with Chelsea Police and other law enforcement officials – responded to a call for shots fired, Parker allegedly told them that she was heading inbound when she stopped to pick up a passenger. That man, Parker allegedly told Transit Police detectives, pulled a gun, demanded her money, and shot at her once as she sat in her seat and three more times after she tried to rush past him and he pushed her to the ground, where he took her wallet and fled.

Though she claimed ignorance as to his identity or motive beyond the robbery, Parker allegedly gave a detailed description of the assailant. This description led Transit Police to conduct an extensive investigation into who he might have been. After posting a composite sketch to the Massachusetts Most Wanted web site and circulating it among local businesses, Transit Police received a tip that led to particular scrutiny of a suspect in past offenses; he was eventually cleared of wrongdoing in the bus incident.

Parker also allegedly showed investigators her uniform jacket, which had three holes in it. Though she described them as bullet holes, she suffered no injuries from the shooting she described. She did, however, leave work and file a worker’s compensation claim: that claim amounted to $7750.87, plus an additional $2063.07 in payments to medical providers.

In a second interview with Transit Police, Parker allegedly stated that she had lied in her initial statement. This time she allegedly indicated that a former intimate partner had sent the gunman to collect a $5000 debt Parker had incurred about 14 years earlier.

After interviewing that former partner, conducting further investigation, and attempting to contact Parker only to be met with evasiveness or, on one occasion, shouted profanities, Transit Police determined that her story was a fabrication.

Parker was first charged in Chelsea District Court on April 30, 2009. A judge dismissed the case of prosecutors’ objections in 2010. Conley’s office put the matter to a grand jury last year, leading to her Dec. 20 indictment. Her trial is now scheduled for Oct. 15 and she is due back in court next month. She was represented at arraignment by attorney Jennifer O’Brien.