How a Marine mom found herself falsely imprisoned, shivering on a jail-cell floor on Christmas morning
Jennifer Heath Box shivered on a mat on the floor, her back pressed against another inmate’s back, as they desperately tried to stay warm.The air conditioning blew a frigid breeze through the Broward County Jail in south Florida.
Guards walked by wearing coats and beanies.It was Christmas Eve.Her son, a Marine, was leaving on Dec.
27 to spend three years stationed in Okanawa, Japan.And the police had arrested the wrong “Jennifer.”“The fact that it was just so easy to have arrested me just makes you question how many more people [are] out there like this,” Box told Fox News Digital, sitting in her Texas home two years after she was arrested and jailed for three nights on someone else’s warrant.Box is now suing the Broward Sheriff’s Office, alleging deputies violated her Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure when they failed to do “basic due diligence to confirm whether the person they planned to arrest was actually subject to the arrest warrant.”Box and her husband rushed to the front of the line, eager to get off the cruise ship on Christmas Eve 2022.They had just spent six days at sea with Box’s brother, celebrating his second recovery from cancer.
Now, Box wanted to get home to celebrate Christmas with her kids, the last time for at least three years the family would all be together before her son left for Okinawa.But when she scanned her badge to disembark, staff said security needed to meet with Box.Soon, police and Customs and Border Protection surrounded Box and her husband.“They asked if I was Jennifer Heath,” she recalled.
Box kept Heath as her middle name after marrying her husband.She repeatedly asked the law enforcement officers standing around her what was going on.Eventually, they said they had a warrant for her from Harris County, Texas.“It’s for endangering a child,” a deputy said.Box’s eyes went wide.
Her husband said, “I think y’all have the wrong person.”Police had a warrant f...