A 21-year-old woman has filed a $20 million civil rights lawsuit after she was wrongly accused of stealing AirPods from a classmate, per NBC News.
The lawsuit, filed by Amara Harris, stems from when she was a junior at Naperville High School in 2019. At the time, Harris had lost her AirPods and searched for them at a table where students gathered before class.
Harris found a pair of AirPods and grabbed them, assuming they were hers. The student was later told that the serial number on the Bluetooth headphones matched another classmate's AirPods, so she returned them to the school's dean.
Despite turning in the headphones, Harris was accused of stealing weeks later. A Naperville Police officer gave her a $100 ticket over the incident, which she refused to pay.
The incident went to court where Harris attended nearly 50 hearings before her case went to trial. In August 2023, Harris was cleared of the theft, and it was determined that she wasn't required to pay the $100 fine.
After years of traveling back and forth from Naperville to Atlanta, where Harris attended Spelman College, the recent graduate is suing the city and members of the police department who wrongly accused her of stealing the AirPods.
The $20 million lawsuit accuses the Naperville Police Department of having a history of “improperly issuing tickets to students for minor infractions, and disproportionately targeting students of color."
“It was just very hard because I was in school with the accusation,” Harris said. “It was a shocking surprise to me that took a really huge toll on my mental state.
“I was angry. I was sad. I felt that I was targeted," she added.
In a statement, Naperville City Attorney Mike DiSanto said the allegations against the city and police department are “without merit."
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