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Michael Lowe’s plane landed in Dallas on May 12, 2020, just in time for him to catch an American Airlines connecting flight to Reno, Nevada, but triggered a string of events that, according to a new lawsuit. , led to his unjust detention. and 17 days in prison more than a year later.
While in prison for theft, he suffered “life-changing … incomprehensible trauma,” according to a lawsuit filed Monday in Tarrant County, Texas, where part of Dallas Fort International Airport is located. Worth.
Now, Lowe is suing American Airlines, he says he provided law enforcement with the information that led to his arrest. Lowe, a resident of Coconino County, Arizona, is seeking a jury trial and is seeking unspecified damages.
An American Airlines spokesman told the Washington Post in an email that the company is reviewing what happened to Lowe, but did not comment further.
Lowe’s attorney Scott Palmer told The Post in an email that he believes the blame for his client’s arrest and imprisonment lies with the airline. “Without American’s disclosure of Michael’s name and information as the sole suspect, the detective would never have issued the orders,” Palmer wrote. “It all starts with the revelation of Michael’s name and just his name.”
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The chain of events that led to Lowe being jailed for 17 days began on May 12, 2020, when an unidentified man robbed a tax-free store at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. Detectives would later use surveillance footage to track down the suspect until he boarded American Airlines Flight 2248, which took off for Reno around 7 p.m., shortly after the robbery.
Lowe was also on that flight, having arrived after a connecting flight from his home in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Without the knowledge of Lowe, DFW Airport Police He received a search warrant on June 18 ordering American Airlines to enter “all and all recorded travel data” for passengers on Flight 2248. However, instead of transmitting information to everyone on the flight, the company allegedly gave police details about only one: Lowe.
The airline did so, according to the lawsuit, although Lowe does not agree with the description of the suspect that the police established in the affidavit of the search warrant: a tall, thin, white or Hispanic man with a cut military-style short-haired man wearing a black polo shirt and blue jeans when he robbed the store and then boarded the plane.
The airline’s suggestion, according to the lawsuit, resulted in two arrest warrants being issued against Lowe on June 30: one for robbery with theft in a building and another for felony felony. Authorities entered these orders into the database of the National Crime Information Center, which connects law enforcement agencies across the country.
There, orders waited more than a year without incident.
Then, on July 4, 2021, Tucumcari, NM police responded to a disturbance at a holiday celebration that Lowe attended while on vacation there with friends. Police checked attendees’ IDs and, after discovering Lowe’s orders, arrested him.
Lowe told them there had been a mistake; he did not remember the last time he had been to Tarrant County and did not know where he was. Realizing he wasn’t going to get out of custody, Lowe told his friends not to worry; he would clear things up quickly and come back soon.
“I was wrong,” the lawsuit says.
Instead of returning to the party, Lowe spent 17 days suffering from an “endless nightmare” inside the Quay County Detention Center in Tucumcari, the lawsuit says. Upon arrival, he was ordered to undress and prove that he was not smuggling into prison.
Lowe claims he barely slept while in prison, which he described in his lawsuit as “the hardest physical test of [his] life. ” At the bottom of the hierarchical order, he was forced to sleep on the concrete floor for most of the time. Even when he secured a metal stretcher, he could not sleep. Prisoners pounded on the walls and screamed for hours. One inmate, who was denied medication because of his psychiatric condition, shouted church hymns “random and incoherent” throughout the night, according to the lawsuit. Another vomited and moaned for three days in a row, he adds.
A “palpable sense of threat” infected the prison, according to the lawsuit. Violence erupted over trivial things: shared TVs, phone access, or no apparent reason. In the suit, Lowe said he was “forced to look.” an inmate hits a younger man three times in the face in quick succession. A week later, a wall was still stained with the blood of the younger inmate.
“Having to sit quietly and not help another human being, especially someone vulnerable as the youngest inmate, was unbearable,” the lawsuit said.
The overcrowding caused “very unhealthy conditions,” he says. The smell of urine and feces smelled so bad that Lowe often breathed through his mouth and wore prison clothes to cover his nose. When he could no longer stand the stench, he asked the prison staff for cleaning supplies. They gave him a bottle of water spray with “just a little disinfectant and a dirty mop without a bucket.”
Aware of his “intense physical vulnerability” in the prison shower, Lowe avoided washing for days until “he could no longer bear the physical discomfort of the dirt of his own condition.” He estimated that he showered four or five times during his 17 days in prison.
The Quay County Detention Center did not immediately respond to a request from The Post early Wednesday.
Officials put the wrong man in a mental center for 2 years. When he objected, they called him “delusional.”
On the 17th day of his imprisonment, a guard called Lowe and, without any explanation, told him that he was being released. Lowe received the clothes with which he had been arrested and was released from prison “for nothing.” He bought a ticket for Greyhound and, after being marked homeless and kicked out of a McDonald’s bathroom, boarded a bus for what was supposed to be a 12-hour trip to Flagstaff. But the bus broke down, turning the trip into a two-day odyssey.
“Crossing the threshold of his house, Mr. Lowe allowed himself to cry until he could no longer stand it.”
According to the lawsuit, the charges against Lowe were eventually dismissed. However, his arrest and imprisonment “has shaken his identity in half and wrapped up his worldview,” the lawsuit alleges. Logically, he knows that a repeated experience is unlikely. But “his fear cannot be rationalized … it infects virtually all his decisions and actions.”
During the purchase, Lowe is worried that he will forget to pay for something. He gets anxious when he sees patrol cars, according to the demand. He rushes through conversations with National Park Service police, experiences he used to enjoy during his work as an outdoor guide.
“As a result of this sustained intense emotional pain, anxiety, anxiety, depression and loss of self-esteem, Mr Lowe has become a man desperate to find himself,” the lawsuit states.
He blames American Airlines. The company should have provided the airport police with information about each passenger in the flight manifest, or about those that match a general description of a suspect. Instead, the airline conducted its own negligent investigation and unfairly identified Lowe as the sole suspect in the airport police department’s investigation, according to the lawsuit.
That, the lawsuit claims, “predictably led” to Lowe’s arrest for a crime he says he never committed.