Man jailed for days after he’s mistaken for sex offender during traffic stop, suit says
A case of mistaken identity led to five days in jail for a California man wrongly arrested on an active sex offender warrant for child molestation, according to a federal lawsuit accusing authorities of violating his civil rights.
Victor Manuel Martinez Wario of Los Angeles County is suing those he says are responsible for his dayslong detainment before his release from the Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles following a traffic stop last year.
At the jail, he was housed with other sex offenders, had to wear a colored jumpsuit that signaled he, too, was an apparent sex offender — and had to wear a wristband given to inmates involved in child molestation cases, according to a complaint filed April 30.
“Mr. Wario lived a waking nightmare for five days. ... A nightmare that would have been prevented by the most basic investigation or smallest amount of care from law enforcement,” his attorney David Gammill, of Gammill Law APC, told McClatchy News on May 1.
His incarceration prevented him from going to work, caring for his disabled fiancée and caused “extreme emotional distress, sleeplessness, anxiety and mental anguish,” the suit says.
What led to his arrest?
In March 2023, Whittier Police Department officers pulled Wario over “for a minor traffic infraction” and arrested him, according to the lawsuit.
The officers believed there was an active warrant out for his arrest, but Wario told them he didn’t have any criminal history besides a misdemeanor offense for driving under the influence, which he was convicted of seven years earlier, the complaint states.
Wario was detained on March 12, 2023, and released from law enforcement custody on March 17, according to Gammill, who said he will update the complaint to correct dates mentioned in the filing.
Wario was first booked into the Whittier Police Department’s jail, where the officers told him “his warrant was for an old case in which he was convicted of child molestation,” the complaint says.
He “adamantly told them that they had the wrong person,” according to the complaint, which says the warrant was meant for a sex offender convicted in September 2012.
Two days later, he was transferred to the Men’s Central Jail run by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and held on a $30,000 bond, the complaint states.
Keri Blakinger, a reporter with the Los Angeles Times, shared the news of the lawsuit’s filing the evening of April 30 on X, formerly known as Twitter, and wrote:
“Whittier police arrested the WRONG guy for a sex offender warrant & put him in Men’s Central Jail in a sex offender unit bc no one bothered to compare him to the ACTUAL DEFENDANT’s mugshot for 4 days. He was released on day 5.”
According to the suit, the judge who set Wario’s bail at his arraignment ordered a fingerprint expert to verify his identity.
The next day, a deputy district attorney received a booking photo of the person who should’ve been arrested instead of Wario and “determined that it was not Mr. Wario,” the complaint says.
Los Angeles County spokeswoman Liz Odendahl told McClatchy News on May 1 that “because this lawsuit was filed yesterday this is the first it has come to our office’s attention.”
“I do not, however, speak for the county as a whole,” Odendahl said in an emailed statement.
The county, its sheriff’s department, the city of Whittier and the Whittier Police Department are all named defendants in the suit.
The sheriff’s department, the city and Whittier police didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from McClatchy News on May 1.
Wario was released from jail one day after it was realized that he wasn’t a convicted sex offender, according to the lawsuit.
“Because of his perceived status as a convicted child molester, Mr. Wario was in serious jeopardy of being attacked by fellow inmates,” the complaint states.
The person who the warrant was meant for never registered as a sex offender as required under California law, the suit says. This is also a requirement under the federal law known as Megan’s Law.
With his lawsuit, Wario demands a jury trial and is seeking an unspecified amount of damages to be determined at trial.
“He was labeled as and treated like the most detested population in our society — child molesters,” Gammill said.
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