Shocking footage shows US Marshals aggressively arresting an Arizona woman who they thought skipped out on probation 25 years ago — but they got the wrong person and instead pulled their guns on a grandmother who had never heard of the suspect.
“I truly felt like I was being kidnapped,” 66-year-old Penny McCarthy told ABC 15 after the outlet obtained bodycam footage from the arrest.
“I am so disappointed in my government. It’s not funny.”
McCarthy was going about her day at home outside Phoenix on March 5, when a van full of people claiming to be US Marshals pulled up and pointed heavy rifles in her face, telling her she was under arrest.
Astonished, McCarthy asked them to verify that they had the right person — pleading with them to just “tell me who I am” — but the officers refused, and instead yelled at her to give herself up.
“Turn away. Turn around. Turn away. We’ll discuss it later. Turn away. You’re gonna get hit,” the officers roared at her.
“Can you prove you’re the police?” McCarthy asked — but the officers refused to even show any identification or warrant until she allowed herself to be cuffed, the footage showed.
“You see that we’re the police,” officers instead replied.
“How can I see that?” she responded.
“If you turn around again, you’re gonna get tased,” an officer warned.
Eventually, McCarthy allowed the officers to detain her, and they insisted she was a 70-year-old Oklahoma woman named Carole Anne Rozak, who skipped out on her probation in 1999 after being jailed for a series of non-violent crimes.
Even though McCarthy denied being Rozak — and said she could prove it — the US Marshals did not allow her to and instead took her into custody.
“They did nothing but treat me like crap and lie to me,” McCarthy told ABC 15.
She was thrown in federal prison for a night, but was sprung the next day after prosecutors presented little evidence beyond “Facebook posts” that a probation office in Oklahoma thought indicated she was really Rozak living under an alias.
Her case was dismissed shortly after she was released from prison.
US Marshals in Oklahoma later said a fingerprinting “glitch” matched McCarthy to Rozak, and a month after the arrest confirmed that McCarthy was not their suspect.
The agency previously told ABC 15 it was continuing to “conduct a thorough review” of the arrest and the officers’ actions.
Requests for comment from The Post were not answered by the time of publication.
McCarthy said she’s been left traumatized by the event, even unwilling to go out into her own front yard without somebody she knows nearby.
“The US Marshals are above the law. That’s what it says to me. And the United States government allows that to happen,” she lamented.
