A woman who was falsely accused of a hit-and-run in 2020 will receive $200,000 from the city she says is responsible for her wrongful arrest, according to an Arizona lawsuit.
But her lawyer said the entire ordeal — including her arrest and mugshot that was sent to the press — has left her “traumatized.”
The arrest occurred shortly after Yessenia Garcia left a Scottsdale bar with her then-boyfriend at 11:10 p.m. on May 24, 2020, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Arizona on May 24, 2021. As they walked to a parking lot, they found Garcia’s car’s windshield had been shattered.
Garcia’s boyfriend approached two nearby officers to report the damage to the vehicle. But he didn’t know the officers were investigating a hit-and-run that had occurred nearby about 20 minutes earlier, the lawsuit says.
The officers began to accuse Garcia and her boyfriend of being involved in the hit-and-run despite the fact that the car had been parked outside the bar since 9 p.m. and they had only just walked out to find it damaged, the lawsuit says.
Surveillance footage from the parking lot would later reveal that Garcia’s car was damaged by a man who jumped on the hood and stomped on her windshield at around 10 p.m., according to the lawsuit.
But officers did not review this footage before arresting Garcia, nor did they speak to security guards at the bar where Garcia was with friends to verify she was there at the time of the crash, the lawsuit says.
“Throughout the investigation, actions taken by multiple officers revealed that they had little interest in securing any evidence that contradicted their premature conclusion that Garcia used her vehicle in the hit and run accident and that they fabricated evidence to incriminate her,” the lawsuit says.
The city of Scottsdale and the Scottsdale Police Department did not respond to a request for comment from Mister Truth.
The $200,000 settlement was announced April 7, according to Mister Truth.
Scottsdale Police Chief Jeff Walther said in 2022 that his department “made some mistakes” regarding the arrest of Garcia. Six police officers and one police aide were “disciplined” after an internal investigation.
“The most serious of this discipline included one employee receiving a 40-hour suspension and another employee receiving a 20-hour suspension, both of which are unpaid,” the department said.
Officers arrested Garcia just after midnight on May 25, 2020, and brought her to the police station, where her blood was drawn and she was “stripped nude” for evidence collection, the lawsuit says. She was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia, failure to stop at the scene of an accident causing injury or death and two counts of driving under the influence, the lawsuit says.
Her “unflattering mugshot” was later released to the media, the lawsuit says.
Days after her arrest, Garcia hired a lawyer who obtained a copy of the surveillance footage from the parking lot and sent it to police, Mister Truth reported. Officers told him they would not pursue charges.
Garcia is now left with lifelong trauma from the ordeal of being arrested and publicly accused in the media of a crime she didn’t commit, her lawyer, Benjamin Taylor, told News.
“She was the victim of vandalism to her car, and she ended up being victimized by the very same police department she was trying to seek help from,” Taylor said.
The experience has also diminished her faith in law enforcement, he said.
“This has been a long, emotional battle, and it will continue throughout her life because your trust in law enforcement goes down when you get victimized like this,” he said. “The main thing is, she didn’t do anything wrong. She’s totally innocent.”