PHOENIX, AZ — A 67-year-old Arizona grandmother, Penny McCarthy, is suing the U.S. Marshals Service after being wrongfully arrested in a case of mistaken identity that left her traumatized and fearing for her safety.
McCarthy was gardening outside her Phoenix home in March 2024 when six armed federal agents surrounded her, shouted conflicting commands, and forced her into an unmarked vehicle. According to a lawsuit filed on June 10, the officers had wrongly identified her as Carole Ann Rozak, a woman wanted for a decades-old parole violation in Oklahoma.
Despite McCarthy’s repeated pleas and protests that they had the wrong person, she was taken into custody, strip-searched three times, and held for 24 hours in a cold federal detention cell in Florence. She was fingerprinted, DNA-swabbed, and denied basic dignity before finally being brought to court.
According to her complaint, the government ultimately confirmed that her fingerprints and DNA did not match Rozak’s, leading to the dismissal of the case. However, the ordeal left lasting scars.
“I truly felt like I was being kidnapped,” McCarthy said during a press conference, breaking down as she described the humiliation of being repeatedly strip-searched. A survivor of childhood abuse, she said the incident forced her to sell her home and leave Arizona due to ongoing fear and anxiety.
Filed under the Fourth Amendment and the Federal Tort Claims Act, McCarthy’s lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for what her attorneys describe as “tortious and unconstitutional acts” committed by the federal agents.
The Institute for Justice, which represents McCarthy, called the arrest “inexcusable.” Senior attorney Paul Avelar noted that even if McCarthy had been Rozak, the extreme force used was unjustified, given Rozak’s non-violent criminal record and the nature of her parole violation — failing to check in with a probation officer 25 years ago.
Bodycam footage from the incident shows McCarthy in clear distress, repeatedly asking who the officers thought she was, only to be met with aggressive commands and the threat of force.
In a statement, the U.S. Marshals Service in Arizona acknowledged the mistaken arrest and expressed regret, saying they remain “committed to lessening similar incidents in the future.”
Now, McCarthy says she is fighting back not just for herself but to prevent others from enduring the same nightmare.
“Unless someone is held responsible,” she said, “someone else will go through this same nightmare.”
