DETROIT (WXYZ) — What happened to Sandra Wilson cost the Detroit mother her job, her dignity, and—for a time—her freedom.
On June 16, she was visiting the gas station across the street from her apartment where she's a regular.
“I go there all the time,” she told Channel 7’s Ross Jones. “Before work, after work.”
She usually stops in to buy coffee but on the night in question, it was cigarettes.
On surveillance video, she can be seen entering the gas station wearing a blue dress. Inside are two other women who would prove important to what would later happen.
While Sandra was waiting in line, one of the customers ahead of her is seen putting her credit card down on the counter while she talks to an employee. Seconds later, she leaves the store but leaves her credit card behind.
Sandra can be seen walking up to the counter to purchase her cigarettes and, while waiting, she notices that the card is sitting there.
But instead of picking it up, she follows the customer who most recently walked out of the store and said she asked her whether the card was hers.
The answer, she says, was yes.
Sandra could be seen grabbing the card and walking it out to the woman while she sat in her car. She didn’t know it, but Sandra gave the card to the wrong woman who, police allege, used it to buy hundreds of dollars in alcohol later that night.
No one alleged that Sandra ever used the credit card. In fact, she only held on to it for about 15 seconds. But the following week, she started getting calls from family and friends asking why she was wanted by the police.
Sandra's picture appeared on social media, first on the Detroit Police Department's 7th Precinct Twitter account, then on the popular Crime News in the D Instagram page.
Both said she was wanted for illegally using someone else’s credit card.
“I was like, I just went to the store!” Wilson recalled. “I just went to the store!”
She knew she didn’t steal a credit card, so Sandra went to the 7th precinct to try and clear her name.
Her interrogation was recorded.
Shortly after sitting down, Sandra is told by a detective she is “the focus of the investigation” and is told she'll be read her Miranda Rights.
Quickly, Sandra says she wants a lawyer.
“I need an attorney,” she says on camera, adding: “Because you all are about to hand me up on something I did not do, did not do. (I) don’t steal.”
She would repeat her request for a lawyer twice.
The detective has Sandra read her Miranda rights aloud, initialing and then signing her name.
The detective wrote at 10:54 AM: “The subject refused to make a statement and asked to speak to an attorney.”
But the interrogation didn’t stop. It continued for another 30 minutes, and not just with one officer. A second would later join.
As the questioning continued, Wilson is seen crying and growing frustrated.
“I don’t know what you all want me to tell y’all!” she says. “I just walked in the gas station and you all took a picture of me and ruined my life."
Then, fifteen minutes after Sandra first asked for a lawyer, officers think they’ve finally caught her.
“Who do you give that card to?” the officer asks Wilson, without showing Wilson the video.
She replied, saying she handed it “to the man behind the counter.”
Officers knew that wasn't the case and would place Sandra under arrest, believing she was lying and hiding her involvement in the scheme.
But Wilson’s attorney, Brandon McNeal, says the explanation is much more innocent.
“Because she says that she gives the card to the clerk—just guessing at what she would do in that situation—they take that as evidence that somehow she’s in cahoots with the woman who used the card illegally,” he said.
During her interrogation, officers refused to show Sandra the surveillance video of the night in question, only showing her still photos of herself.
“This is Sandra’s local gas station,” McNeal said. “This could have been from any day that she went to the gas station.”
Sandra spent the next three days in lock up and would later be charged with two felonies, facing up to 4 years in prison.
She says the criminal charges cost her her job as a security guard.
For four months, Sandra fought to clear her name. In October, the case went to a jury trial where—finally—her nightmare came to an end.
“This is unbelievable to me,” said an exasperated Judge Paul Cusick of Wayne County Third Circuit Court. “No trier of fact—even in the light most favorable to the prosecution—could ever think that Ms. Wilson is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Before the case could go to the jury, Judge Cusick threw it out.
“Absurd and ridiculous and wrong,” he bellowed. “And this was not a thorough investigation.”
Sandra was acquitted but today—nearly two months later—hardly feels like she won.
She never got her job back. Her family and friends still wonder if she did something wrong and, if you pull up social media, you’ll still find those pictures labeling her a criminal.
“They embarrassed me. Humiliated me. I have 49 applications and I can’t get a job,” she said. “That’s not fair.”
Contact 7 Investigator Ross Jones at ross.jones@wxyz.com or at (248) 827-9466.