Criminal ID theft: Victim spends week in Cook County jail for perp’s crime
When Darrius Whitehorn was arrested as a robbery suspect last week, he spent a week in jail and became a poster child for criminal identity theft.
Most people think of ID theft as a crime with only financial ramifications, but—though criminal ID theft can also cost big bucks—the damage it wreaks on its victims can be even more serious.
Soon after Whitehorn, 27, was arrested by Chicago police officers they determined he wasn’t involved in the robbery, but they discovered an arrest warrant with his name, birth date and the Social Security number for a separate robbery in Hammond, Indiana.
Whitehorn and his parents knew there had been a terrible mistake and spent the week begging the police and sheriff’s departments to release their son. They couldn’t explain the warrant in their son’s name, but knew their son—a criminal justice student at Loyola University– wasn’t a criminal.
A week later the police were able to provide the explanation: Kirk Davis, a convicted robber and a friend of Whitehorn’s older brother, had usurped Whitehorn’s identity. Fingerprint evidence and a photo lineup linked Davis to another robbery committed in Hammond in February of last year, and cleared Whitehorn of the crime. Davis died in October.
“I would not wish this on my worst enemy,” Whitehorn said. “In class, they tell you that you’re innocent until proven guilty. But I felt I was guilty until proven innocent.”
Whitehorn missed a week of work and the first day of classes while he was in lock up, and his mother took a week off work to fight for her son’s freedom.
“I didn’t want to go back to work until he was out of this hellhole,” his mother, Marie Latham said.
Tags: Cook County jail, criminal ID theft, criminal identity theft, Darrius Whitehorn, Kirk Davis, Marie Latham
