ATLANTA – Mashara Williams is a successful architect. She is married, eight months pregnant and has a perfectly clean criminal history. And up until Monday, thanks to identity theft, she also had an arrest record.
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For months, Williams faced an uphill battle to clear her name after someone stole her identity. Between January and June of 2008, a woman she had never met used her identity to buy a car, insurance and accumulate at least three traffic tickets.
Williams found out and fought back, eventually getting results. She showed 11Alive’s Blayne Alexander a letter from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office, saying Marielle Fortune had confessed to identity theft.
That was in 2008. Williams took steps to clear her name, including getting a new driver’s license number and checking her credit report monthly.
She thought it was over, until she was stopped last Friday because her window tinting was too dark. But instead of a ticket, she was placed under arrest.
“He was going to write me a ticket, and he comes back with handcuffs,” she said. “Once I got in the car, he told me that I was wanted, or that there was a warrant for my arrest from DeKalb County.”
He said the warrant was for failure to appear in court on a traffic violation.
“I know it wasn’t me. I never go into DeKalb County, I never got a ticket. I never got a notice of failure to appear,” she said. “I’ve never seen any of this.”
Still, she was handcuffed, booked and shuffled between three different jails. Eight months pregnant, Williams spent the night in a crowded holding cell.
“There was a woman in there that was bloody, her clothes were bloody,” she said. “And I’m thinking, my baby is gonna get sick.”
Williams was concerned the arrest might damage her career, so she and her husband contacted 11Alive’s Help Desk to help clear her record.
Monday, 11Alive’s Bill Liss made calls to DeKalb Police, prosecutors and courts and brought in fellow attorney Tom Salata to help the Williams sort through legal documents.
By the end of the day, Liss connected with DeKalb County Community Prosecutor Sonja Brown, who expunged the arrest record and dismissed all charges against Williams.
