A Florida woman was recently issued a ticket for using her cellphone with her right hand while driving. However, that accusation had a serious flaw: The woman who received the ticket does not now have, nor has she ever had had, a right hand.
According to a report by CBS News, the woman who received the ticket is named Kathleen Thomas. She was driving in Lake Worth, Florida back in February when she was stopped by a deputy from the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office. Thomas recently shared the bodycam footage of that traffic stop on her Instagram and Tik Tok accounts; the video has since gone viral as it appears more like a Saturday Night Live skit than an actual traffic stop.
The video opens with the officer explaining to Thomas that the police were doing an operation to cut down on distracted driving and that she was spotted using a cell phone with her right hand. Thomas immediately shows the officer that she doesn’t have a right hand. She laughs and says to the officer, “Obviously not. So, do you want to just call this a day?”
However, the officer is undeterred, and continues to insist he saw Thomas use a phone with her right hand. She again shows the officer that doing so would be impossible for her. Still, he presses, asking her if she used the phone with her hand, then asking her to “raise your hand to God” to swear she didn’t have a phone in her hand. She raises her right arm, which, again, does not have a hand; the officer then asks her to raise her other arm, which she does. He then requests her driver’s license, registration and insurance; she complies, but is still issued a ticket for using a handheld device.
Thomas, an adaptive athlete, was born without her lower right arm, but she clearly is not missing her sense of humor—or a level head. She took the incident in stride; when she had her day in court over the incident, Thomas posted another video about it on her social media accounts, explaining that the case was dismissed for lack of evidence.
The entire situation sounds absurd, yet for Thomas, it was a very real traffic stop. In the end, common sense finally prevailed, but not before the deputy managed to issue one of the most unbelievable distracted driving tickets we’ve ever heard of.
