A Valley man was detained for a crime that he didn't commit, only to find out that his identity was stolen.
ABC 15 reported that Marc Arnowitz experienced a scary moment when he saw the police lights flash in his rearview mirror. He said that officers pulled him over because one of his taillights was out. That's when the officer came back to the vehicle with a change of tone.
Arnowitz explained, "I was like, 'put my phone down?' And [the officer] was like, 'yeah, put your phone down. Step out of the vehicle.'"
Arnowitz has a clean record, two jobs, a fiancé, and four children so he was shocked when he was handcuffed and asked to sit on the curb. He said that police ran his ID and that it was tied to a felony drug warrant.
He said, “How could this happen? Are they going to take me in? All these things are going through my head at the time."
According to records, Arnowitz was under "investigative detention" for 13 minutes. Gilbert Police explained that the real man wanted for the felony drug possession used Arnowitz's name as an alias.
Arnowitz later remembered that his wallet with all his personal info was stolen years ago. “They took a couple of my credit cards and debit cards out. I wasn’t able to tie information back until this happened. It seems very coincidental,” he said.
According to law enforcement, Arnowitz could be fighting for his identity for the rest of his life.