By admin 
A South Carolina jury awarded a woman $250,000 Thursday after she was arrested for a crime she did not do two years earlier, according to court documents, the woman and her lawyer.
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The jury in Chester County made the decision in Aalayah Owens’ favor after a four-day civil trial that came after she sued the Chester County Sheriff’s Office. Chester County has around 32,000 residents and is located between Rock Hill and Columbia.
Owens, of Rock Hill, was arrested in Fort Mill in October 2024 after Chester deputies had taken out a warrant against her alleging conspiracy from a drive-by shooting case that happened a month earlier, records show. She then was taken to Chester County where she spent the night in jail.
However, another person had given Chester deputies Owens’ name, according to the lawsuit and her lawyer, Chris Kenney of Columbia. Deputies arrested her without a positive identification of Owens or seeing a picture of her from the S.C. DMV, Kenney said. An expert testified for Owens that sheriff’s office policies and procedures were not followed, Kenney said.
“They never made a positive identification of Aalayah Owens,” Kenney told The Herald on Friday. “They arrested the wrong person.”
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Kenney said the case was about holding the sheriff’s office accountable and the jury awarded Owens exactly what was asked for — $250,000.
“We are grateful the jury saw the case the way we did,” Kenney said.
In a phone interview with The Herald, Owens said the arrest while with her daughter who was 5 years old at the time caused her to lose her job as a day care teacher and cost her her apartment and car. It also changed how she feels about “safety and the world around us.”
“I finally got justice yesterday,” Owens said Friday. “You can stand up for yourself and fight to be heard.”
Owens said she does not want what happened to her to happen to anyone else.
Sheriff’s office spokesperson Londa Pringle told The Herald by phone and email Friday the sheriff’s office would not comment on the case and jury verdict: “Because there is still no final ruling on certain issues within this matter, it would be inappropriate for our office to comment while the status is pending.”
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