(NewsNation) — Michael Lowe says American Airlines wrongly identified him as a guy who burglarized a duty-free shop at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, just because he was on the same flight as the real suspect.
Lowe then spent 17 days in jail at the Quay County Detention Center in rural New Mexico, and he had no idea why.
“They told me the charges of felony burglary of a building, but I had no idea what that could possibly mean,” Lowe said during an appearance Thursday on NewsNation’s “Banfield.”
To make matters worse, the prison he was placed in was a “nightmare,” with violent outbursts, unsanitary conditions and no COVID regulations, according to Lowe.
“He didn’t see a judge for eight days in New Mexico, which, I don’t understand that at all. There’s no excuse for that, whatsoever,” Lowe’s lawyer Scott Palmer said.
“If it can happen to Michael Lowe, it can happen to anybody. He did nothing wrong, and he paid a heavy price,” Palmer added.
Lowe was ultimately released from the New Mexico jail, which was when he started putting the pieces together. After making “multiple phone calls” to a detective in Texas, whom Lowe begged to check the booking photo, police saw he was not the suspect.
Lowe and Palmer want to get to the bottom of why this happened.
“They (American Airlines) clearly followed him on surveillance camera to my same flight, but then the search warrant says they want the identity of all the passengers, and American Airlines gave them one name, and that was mine,” Lowe said.
American Airlines responded to NewsNation with the following comment.
“As required by law, American cooperates with and responds to court orders for information related to possible criminal activity, and that’s what we did in this instance when we were presented with a search warrant.“