FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Jennifer Heath Box had few worries as she exited her cruise ship at Fort Lauderdale’s port on Christmas Eve 2022.
The Texan and her husband had spent six days at sea celebrating with her brother, a Georgia police officer who had just completed cancer treatment. In two hours the couple had a flight home to Houston, where they would spend Christmas with their Marine son, who was leaving for a three-year deployment in Japan, and two other adult children.
But according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed Thursday by Box against the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, its deputies wrongly arrested her as she disembarked and then jailed her for three days, subjecting her to a body cavity search and blasting her cell with death metal music and freezing air.
Deputies accused the 50-year-old financial systems administrator of being a much younger woman with a similar name who was wanted in Harris County, Texas, for felony child endangerment. Harris County had mistakenly put Box’s photo on its warrant, but none of the other information matched.