Royal Caribbean passenger sues Florida sheriff over mistaken identity arrest after holiday cruise
A “degraded” Royal Caribbean cruise passenger alleges she was subjected to humiliating treatment across three days inside a Florida jail when she was mistakenly arrested after a family vacation in 2022.Jennifer Heath Box, 50, filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Broward County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday claiming she was wrongfully arrested and detained for 3 days because deputies failed to realize their mistake.“I have nothing but anger and frustration.You feel completely broken when you’re arrested, because you’re humiliated, you’re degraded,” Heath Box said at a press conference on Thursday.
“So it breaks you.”Heath Box had returned to port in Fort Lauderdale aboard the Harmony of the Seas on Dec.24, 2022, after a family vacation that made stops in the Bahamas, Jamaica and Haiti.The trip served as a celebration for her brother, a Georgia police officer who had just completed his cancer treatment.Heath Box had two hours before her flight back to Houston, Texas where she would celebrate Christmas with her oldest son who was leaving for a three-year deployment to Japan with the Marines.As she disembarked from the ship, Heath Box scanned her ID triggering an alert at the gate.“It automatically came up with a warning,” Heath Box said, according to WPLG.
“At that point, security surrounded me along with the police, asked me if I was Jennifer Heath and asked me to remove my jewelry.”“I said, ‘What am I being arrested for?’” Heath Box said.“That’s whenever they said ‘child endangerment.’ They escorted me off the ship in front of everyone.”The warrant was issued by officials in Harris County, Texas for Jennifer del Carmin Heath, wanted in a felony case involving a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old child.Besides the same first and middle names, there was little more the two women had in common.The wanted suspect was 23 years younger than Heath Box, was five inches shorter and had different colored hair, eyes and skin tone.Hea...