Attorneys for a 49-year-old Black woman, Nickie Sledge of Canton, Georgia, state she intends to file a lawsuit against the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office after claims she was wrongfully arrested and jailed.
The legal team alleges law enforcement mistakenly arrested its client, who was charged with two counts of abuse, neglect, or exploitation of disabled or elderly, instead of the intended suspect: a 43-year-old white woman from Kentucky also named Nikki Sledge.
Sledge, of Georgia, was taken into custody on December 21, 2024, in the presence of her grandson. Sledge said she was baffled when deputies from Rockdale County showed up at the movie theater in Conyers where she was watching a movie with her 5-year-old grandson on December 21, 2024, just a few days before Christmas.
They had lured her outside with a text saying her car had been struck in the parking lot, civil rights attorney Harry M. Daniels, who is representing her, told Atlanta Black Star.
“’Elder abuse? My elderly mother lives with me. I’m being punked,” Sledge recalled telling them, according to WSB. “No ma’am, you’re not being punked,” a female deputy sternly replied.
Attorneys provided a case report from the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office detailing the situation. The victim was identified as the grandfather of Nikki Sledge’s husband, and warrants for the accused couple listed a Kentucky address. The report included images and a video still of the two suspects. Furthermore, the victim’s longtime partner, a witness, stated that the couple had left Georgia and was residing in Kentucky.
According to her attorneys, Sledge, who alleges her arrest was wrongful, was subjected to multiple strip searches and detained for three days. She was initially booked and strip-searched at the Rockdale County Jail before being transferred to the Cherokee County Detention Center, where she was strip-searched a second time and held.
Sledge’s attorney, Daniels, confirmed that her charges were dismissed in February 2025. Sledge’s legal team stated that she went through a terrible ordeal: being humiliated, falsely arrested, and locked up. To make matters worse, her mugshot ended up all over social media.
“This is a person that has no criminal record. She’s a hard-working taxpaying citizen, a law-abiding citizen, and all of a sudden, on a good day, happy day, spending time with your grandchild you get arrested, you get taken away, ripped,” said Daniels. “Your freedom of liberty is taken away, all because somebody didn’t do their job.”
11Alive News got in touch with the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office to ask for a comment about a possible lawsuit.
“We only recently became aware of this matter through media inquiries. At this time, we have not received any communication from Ms. Sledge or her attorney, nor have we been served with any civil papers related to this incident. However, we take this matter very seriously and are actively reviewing the situation to understand what occurred.”
Despite the dismissal of the charges against her in February, Sledge remains worried that the arrest could negatively affect her in the future.
“This is a record that won’t disappear,” Sledge told WSB. “It’s gonna follow me the rest of my life.”
