Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 18, 1995 TAG: 9502200009
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL STOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Patricia Ann Collins was off from her job as a convenience-store clerk when police showed up at her home in Ocoee, Fla., on June 19, 1992. Collins was arrested on a warrant from Franklin County and taken to jail for a crime she didn't commit.
It was a case of mistaken identity, and Collins blames the Franklin County Sheriff's Office. Last February, she filed a $100,000 suit in Roanoke's federal court.
The suit was settled out of court in December, and last week Collins received a check for $32,000, plus her attorney's fees.
Collins said she decided to settle the suit because she wants to put the incident behind her.
"My nerves just can't handle it," she said in a telephone interview. "I just wanted to get on with my life and forget about it."
Randy Cargill, an attorney for the Sheriff's Office, stressed that the department admitted no wrongdoing.
"It was an unfortunate incident," he said. "Through an unfortunate set of circumstances, the wrong person was arrested."
According to court records and an interview with Collins, here's what happened:
On Dec. 17, 1991, an undercover drug agent went to the Hilltop Trailer Park in Franklin County and purchased cocaine from a woman identified as Patricia Collins.
In the police report, the drug dealer was described as age 32, 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing 130 pounds. Based on evidence from the undercover drug purchase, a Franklin County grand jury handed down a cocaine distribution indictment on June 1, 1992, in the name of Patricia Ann Collins.
The indictment did not include a description of the suspect.
On June 19, 1992, Ray Hundley of the Franklin County Sheriff's Office sent information to the Ocoee police asking them to arrest a Patricia Ann Collins, age 37. She was described as 5 feet tall, 148 pounds, with green eyes and brown hair.
Ocoee police officers went to Collins' Florida home and charged her with being a fugitive from justice.
"I didn't know what was going on. I just kept telling them that I wasn't this person. I begged them to let me call Virginia," Collins recalled in a telephone interview last year.
Collins lived in Franklin County for 11 years, but she moved to Florida in early 1991.
Ocoee police held her without bond while waiting for her extradition to Franklin County.
On June 29, 1992, the Franklin County Sheriff's Office told the Ocoee police that they had arrested the wrong person. The real culprit eventually was caught, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison.
Hundley and David King, an investigator with the Henry County Sheriff's Office, were listed as co-defendants in the suit. King helped in the undercover drug purchase.
Cargill said the settlement money paid to Collins came from an insurance policy the Sheriff's Office has with with the state.
The settlement also requires that the arrest be removed from Collins' record.
by CNB