A “humiliated” Royal Caribbean cruise passenger claims he was wrongly arrested after a family vacation in 2022 and subjected to humiliating treatment in a Florida jail for three days.
Jennifer Heath Box, 50, filed a civil rights lawsuit Thursday against the Broward County Sheriff's Office, alleging she was wrongfully arrested and detained for three days because deputies failed to notice the mistake.
“You just feel anger and frustration. When you get arrested, you feel completely devastated and humiliated,” Heath Box said at a news conference Thursday. “So it just breaks your heart.”
Heath Box returned to port in Fort Lauderdale aboard the Harmony of the Seas on Dec. 24, 2022, after a family vacation that included stops in the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Haiti.
The trip was a celebration for her brother, a Georgia state trooper, who had just finished cancer treatment.
Heath Box had two hours before his flight back to Houston, Texas, where he planned to celebrate Christmas with his eldest son, who was serving in the Marines for three years in Japan.
As she disembarked, Heath Box scanned her ID and an alarm sounded at the gate.
“There was an automatic warning,” Heath Box said. According to WPLG. “At that point, security and police surrounded me, asked me if I was Jennifer Heath and asked me to remove my jewelry.”
“I said, 'What are they arresting me for?'” Heath Box said. “They always said, 'child endangerment.' They took me off the boat in front of everybody.”
The warrant was issued by authorities in Harris County, Texas, for Jennifer Del Carmine Heath, who was wanted in connection with a felony case involving a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old.
Other than the same first and middle names, the two women had very little in common.
The wanted suspect was 23 years younger than Heath Box, five inches shorter and had a different hair color, eye color and skin tone.
Heath Box pointed out a number of inconsistencies between her and the warrant, but her photo was attached to the warrant, which is what prompted Deputy Peter Peraza to make the arrest.
According to the media, Peraza was reinstated to the sheriff's office after being acquitted of manslaughter in 2013 for shooting and killing a man with an air rifle.
After returning to work, Peraza was assigned to dock duties.
Heath Box said he was humiliated when he arrived at the Broward County Jail, strip-searched, handcuffed and given a prison uniform and blanket.
Upon receipt, a detention deputy checked her driver's license but found none in the system for the then-49-year-old.
“She came out, handed her driver's license to Peter and said, 'I checked my driver's license and there's nothing in the system,'” Heath Box said. “Peter came back and said, 'No, it's her. Let me show you. I can prove it's her. I'll show you a picture.' Again, that's all he was focused on.”
Heath Box was held in a detention centre for three days, subjected to a thorough full body search and claims police pumped death metal music and frosty air into her cell.
Heath Box said that despite the extreme cold in the prison, he was given a thin prison uniform while the guards wore stocking caps, thick jackets and gloves, and that he and his cellmate slept back-to-back to stay warm.
After Broward County learned of Harris County's mistake, she was released from jail but did not receive an apology; she was told “that's just how it goes.”
“What I went through should never have happened and the fact that I've spent a long time trying to rebuild my life,” Heath Box said.
Heath Box and her attorney, Jared McClain, said they don't plan to sue Harris County because they believe county officials made a mistake.
They are going after the sheriff's office after multiple deputies and their subsequent superiors failed to acknowledge some apparent inconsistencies.
“There are at least 10 differences between the woman named in the warrant, Jennifer Del Carmen Heath, and the woman standing with me today, Jennifer Heath Box, all of which should have been obvious to the Broward County sheriff,” said Institute for Justice attorney Bobby Taylor.
The Broward County Sheriff's Office said Peraza followed proper procedures and that an internal investigation was conducted that found no wrongdoing by any staff members.
With post wire
