A glamorous cruise ship passenger says her life has been ruined after authorities made a terrible mistake when she stepped off a ship in Florida.
Jennifer Heath Box, now 50, had just returned to Port Everglades from a weeklong voyage aboard Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas on Christmas Eve 2022 when she was surrounded by security guards and Broward County sheriff’s deputies.
They told her she was being arrested for child endangerment in Harris County, Texas, and Box was handcuffed and taken off the boat.
She spent three days behind bars, enduring horrendous conditions, including an inmate who routinely tried to break into her cell while she was alone, officers blasting death metal from speakers and frigid temperatures that forced her to sleep back-to-back with another inmate just to stay warm, the mother of three said at a news conference Thursday. according to NBC Miami.
But Texas police were actually looking for another woman with a similar name, Jennifer Del Carmen Heath.
Jennifer Heath Box, now 50, says her life was ruined after authorities made a huge mistake when she stepped off a cruise ship in Florida two years ago.
He is now suing Broward County and Deputy Sheriff Peter Peraza (pictured)
Box is now suing Broward County and Deputy Sheriff Peter Peraza, who her attorneys say violated her constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as her right to due process.
They said Box repeatedly tried to tell Peraza he had the wrong person, and when a booking officer looked up Box’s driver’s license number, he also told the officer he had no outstanding warrants.
The attorneys also said a number of other details in the warrant should have alerted Peraza and the other officers that Box was not the suspect Harris County authorities were looking for, including the difference in name and the age difference between Box and Heath, which is 23 years.
Heath was also five inches shorter than Box, had a different eye color, hair color and skin tone, and had a different home address, driver’s license number, Social Security number and Harris County System Person Number.
In addition, Heath had five young children, while Box had three adult children and no grandchildren.
“They had at least 10 or 12 different pieces of information attached to the warrant that screamed at them that this was not their suspect,” attorney Jared McClain argued. according to the Tampa Bay Times.
But still, she said, Peraza — who was reinstated to the department after being acquitted of murder in the 2013 shooting of a man with an air rifle — continued to insist she was the suspect based on the photo attached to the Texas departure warrant, and forced Box to strip-search her before jailing her.
Box had just returned to Port Everglades on the Harmony of the Seas cruise ship when she was surrounded by security guards and Broward County sheriff’s deputies on Christmas Eve 2022.
She continued to insist that the officers had mistaken the person, but they stripped her naked and put her in jail anyway.
She says she then missed Christmas with her adult children and was unable to say goodbye to her son, a U.S. Marine who was just three days away from being deployed to Japan for three years.
“Having to call my kids and tell them I wasn’t going to be there for Christmas, and hearing that I hurt them by not being there, that’s the first thing that tears you apart,” Box said.
Conditions at the Broward County Jail only made matters worse.
“You feel completely devastated when you get arrested because you’re humiliated, you’re degraded, you’re destroyed as a person,” Box said.
“I’m angry about it. I’ve never had any problems with the law before,” she added.
Box said she was forced to spend three days behind bars and missed Christmas with her children, as well as the chance to say goodbye to her son before his deployment to Japan.
Finally, Box’s brother, a police officer, urged Broward County and Harris County officials to compare his fingerprints with those of Del Carmen Heath.
The Broward County Sheriff’s Office said they asked Harris County authorities on Dec. 26 for fingerprints to confirm they had the right person, but received a response hours later that the county had no prints on file because Box had never been arrested before. Local 10 News reported last year.
But Box’s brother was later able to determine that a Harris County employee accidentally attached Box’s driver’s license photo to the warrant instead of Del Carmen Heath’s.
On Dec. 27, Broward County officials said, they received a message from their partners in Texas that read, “Please release our hold on the above-mentioned subject as soon as possible” without any further explanation, and Box was released from custody.
When she was released, Box said, an officer simply told her, “It happens.”
Box’s attorneys argue that Broward County and Peraza violated his constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as his right to due process.
“Broward County should have systems in place to ensure that the person they are incarcerating is the person they intend to incarcerate, particularly when they are enforcing warrants out of jurisdiction, which they regularly do in Port Everglades,” McClain argued in announcing the lawsuit Thursday.
“They know this problem exists and they haven’t done anything to fix it.”
The Broward County Sheriff’s Office now says it “sympathizes with the plight of Ms. Jennifer Heath Box.”
But officials said they reviewed Peraza’s actions and “found no misconduct by any employee.”
‘On December 24, 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol alerted a BSO agent that a female passenger departing a cruise ship in Port Everglades had an outstanding warrant for felony child endangerment,’ a department spokesperson said.
‘The BSO deputy followed appropriate protocols in handling this matter and, after receiving confirmation of the Harris County warrant, arrested Ms. Box.
‘If it were not for the arrest warrant filed by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, Customs and Border Patrol would not have been notified and she would not have been arrested.’
No lawsuit has been filed against Harris County, and the case against Del Carmen Heath was dismissed two days after Box was released from jail, the Tampa Bay Times reports.