A glamorous cruise ship passenger says her life was ruined after authorities made a horrific mistake when she stepped off a vessel in Florida.
Jennifer Heath Box, now 50, had just returned to Port Everglades from a weeklong voyage onboard Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas on Christmas Eve 2022 when she was swarmed by security guards and Broward County sheriff’s deputies.
They told her she was being arrested on child endangerment charges in Harris County, Texas, and Box was handcuffed and taken off the ship.
She went on to spend three days behind bars, enduring horrendous conditions including a male inmate who routinely tried to enter her cell while she was alone, officers blasting death metal over the speakers and freezing temperatures that forced her to sleep back-to-back with another inmate just to keep warm, the mother-of-three claimed at a news conference on Thursday, according to NBC Miami.
But cops in Texas were actually searching 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 massive mistake when she stepped off a cruise ship in Florida two years ago
She is now suing Broward County and Sheriff’s Deputy Peter Peraza (pictured)
Box is now suing Broward County and Sheriff’s Deputy Peter Peraza, whom her lawyers 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 that he had the wrong person, and when a booking officer ran Box’s driver’s license number, he too, told the deputy that she had no outstanding warrants.
The attorneys also said that a number of other details from the warrant should have alerted Peraza and the other deputies that Box was not the suspect Harris County authorities were looking for – including the name difference and the difference in ages between Box and Heath, which is 23 years.
Heath was also five inches shorter than Box, had different color eyes, hair and skin tone, had a different home address, driver’s license number, Social Security number and Harris County System Person Number.
Additionally, Heath had five young children, whereas Box had three adult children and no grandchildren.
‘They had at least 10 to 12 different pieces of information attached to the warrant that screamed to them, this was not their suspect,’ attorney Jared McClain argued, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
But still, he said, Peraza – who was reinstated at the department after being acquitted of manslaughter in the shooting a man who had an air rifle in 2013 – continued to insist she was the suspect based on the photo attached to the warrant out of Texas, and forced Box to strip search before booking her in jail.
Box had just returned to Port Everglades on the Harmony of the Seas cruise ship when she was swarmed by security guards and Broward County sheriff’s deputies on Christmas Eve 2022
She kept insisting the deputies had the wrong person, but was still strip searched and booked in jail
She says she then missed Christmas with her adult children, and was not able to say goodbye to her son, a US 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 to hear that I hurt them because I wasn’t there, that’s the first thing that tears at you,’ Box said.
The conditions at the Broward County Jail just made it worse.
‘You feel completely broken when you’re arrested because you’re humiliated, you’re degraded, it breaks you as a person,’ Box said.
‘I’m angry about it. I’ve never been in trouble 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
Eventually, Box’s brother – a police officer himself, urged both Broward County and Harris County officials to compare her fingerprints to Del Carmen Heath’s.
The Broward County Sheriff’s Office said they asked authorities in Harris County on December 26 for fingerprints to confirm they had the right person, but received a response hours later that the county had no prints on record 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.
By December 27, Broward County officials said, they received a message from their partners in Texas saying ‘Release our hold on the above named subject as soon as possible’ without any further explanation, and Box was released from custody.
As she was released, Box said, a deputy told her simply, ‘It happens.’
Box’s attorneys argue Broward County and Peraza violated her constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as her right to due process
‘Broward County should have systems in place to ensure that the person they’re putting in jail is the person that they’re intending to put in jail, particularly when they’re enforcing out-of-jurisdiction warrants, which they do regularly at Port Everglades,’ McClain argued as he announced the lawsuit on Thursday.
‘They know this problem exists and they have done nothing to fix it.’
The Broward County Sheriff’s Office now says it ‘sympathizes with the difficult situation Ms. Jennifer Heath Box was in.’
But officials said they reviewed Peraza’s actions and ‘no employee misconduct was found.
‘On December 24, 2022, US Customs and Border Patrol alerted a BSO deputy that a passenger exiting a cruise ship at Port Everglades had an outstanding warrant for her arrest on a charge of felony child endangerment,’ a spokesperson for the department said.
‘The BSO deputy followed the appropriate protocols in handling this matter, and after receiving confirmation of the Harris County warrant, arrested Ms. Box.
‘Had it not been 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.