A wrongful arrest that American Airlines mistakenly identified as a burglary suspect led to an Arizona man spending 17 days in prison.
According to the civil action filed in Tarrant County, Texas this week, Michael Lowe, 46, is suffering from ongoing “mental anguish” and “emotional distress” as a result of American Airlines’ “gross negligence”.
Lowe boarded American flight 2248 at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, May 12, 2020. According to the lawsuit, he didn’t know that someone had broken into the nearby duty-free shop or that surveillance cameras had captured the suspect board his plane.
American refused to give a passenger list to police. His legal team explained that Lowe’s was the only name they gave.
Scott Palmer, his attorney, wrote that American’s misidentification of Mr. Lowe was a cause for felony and misdemeanor warrants being issued for Mr. Lowe. “The consequences of American’s breach of care it owed Mr. Lowe’s would be life-altering.”
Lowe was attending a Fourth of July celebration with friends in Tucumcari (New Mexico) when police arrived to investigate a disturbance reported and asked partygoers for their identification.
After running Lowe’s information through a database of law enforcement officers, the Texas warrants that he had outstanding popped up. This led to Lowe being arrested and imprisoned in Quay County Jail.
The lawsuit stated that Lowe did not sue Quay County. However, he claimed jailers were failing to curb Covid-19, failing provide adequate medical care for prisoners, and failing to make any effort to segregate violent suspects from those charged with violent crimes.
Palmer described his client’s life after he was released from prison, writing that “Mr. Lowe also experiences nightmares and intrusive thought because of his imprisonment.” It is difficult for Mr. Lowe, due to both anxiety and depression, to fall asleep and stay asleep.
According to the lawsuit, police eventually compared surveillance photos of Lowe’s suspect in the store burglary against Lowe’s mug shot. This showed that “it was evident that American Airlines had a wrong person and that Mr. Lowe wasn’t the person responsible for that burglary on May 12, 2020.”
American Airlines said it didn’t do anything wrong, and was responding to a police request.
“As required under law, American cooperates and responds to court requests for information regarding possible criminal activity and that’s exactly what we did when we were presented a search warrant,” Rob Himler, an airline spokesperson, stated in a Wednesday statement.
When asked if Lowe’s name was not given to police by the airline, the representative didn’t immediately reply.
Representatives of the Quay Sheriff could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday. A representative of the DFW Police declined to comment.
His lawyer stated that Lowe opted against suing the sheriff or police because he believes there are higher standards required to sue government agencies.
Palmer stated that American Airlines is responsible for Michael’s disclosure. He made the statement to NBC News Wednesday. “But, for their actions warrants never were issued for Michael’s arrest. American started all this by naming him.
