Chesterfield police arrest wrong person for attempted robbery in McDonald's bathroom

CHESTERFIELD, VA (WWBT) - A Chesterfield woman is fighting to clear her name after she was arrested for a crime she never committed. 31-year-old Angela Powell faces three felonies that she is now trying to get dismissed.

You may recall, two days after Christmas a woman was caught on surveillance video after she tried to rob two people inside the ladies room at a Chesterfield McDonald's.

Police admit, they initially arrested the wrong person saying in a an email, "The first arrestee was developed as a suspect based on a tip."

According to Powell, that tip came when a woman commented on NBC12's Facebook photo, which asked folks to help identify the suspect for police.

"It's crazy how easy it is for you to get arrested in Chesterfield County," said Angela Powell in an interview with NBC12. "All you did was put a picture on the NBC12 news site, someone wrote my name underneath it and that's how all this started."

Chesterfield police say, a photo lineup was then shown to a victim of the attempted robbery and the victim picked out Powell's photo, identifying her as the suspect.

Problem is, says Powell, police used her driver's license photo, which was taken at a time when she was thinner and her hair was dark.

Police go on to say, "though a suspect was arrested, the investigation didn't stop. Police received information that another subject was responsible for the robbery and pursued that information immediately."

Finally, Sabrina Driscoll was arrested. Police say, she also confessed to the crime.

But Powell's fight isn't over.

She still needs to go through the legal process to get the charges dropped and cleared from her record. Powell will be in court Wednesday to try and get these charges dismissed.

After that, she has to start a completely new process to get them expunged from her record, which could take months.

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