Layton woman says ex-husband’s girlfriend fooled police, impersonated her during traffic stop

WEBER COUNTY, Utah — A Layton woman says she is facing three misdemeanor drug charges after someone assumed her identity during a traffic stop in April.

And now, the Weber County Attorney’s Office believes she did not commit any of those crimes.

Charity Castleberry found out about the charges and warrant out for her arrest a week ago when she reported her truck stolen.

When she questioned the charges, WCSO officials provided her police body camera footage of the April 22 arrest in Ogden. She reviewed the footage and instantly identified the suspect as her ex-husband’s girlfriend.

“You can tell it’s not me,” she said. “Her eye color is different than mine. She is missing all her teeth — I have all mine.”

The video shows the woman providing Castleberry’s information and an officer questioning her multiple times about her identity.

At one point the officer takes a picture of Castleberry’s picture on file and compares it to the woman in the car.

“Is this you? Because that doesn’t look like you,” the officer said. The woman responds, “I’ve lost a lot of weight.”

Other officers on-scene also question if the woman is who she said she was.

Castleberry said the video proves even the arresting officer is not convinced he made the right decision.

“He is second-guessing himself four times in the video,” she said. “If you are a cop and you were going to second-guess yourself more than one time, you shouldn’t be putting the charges on her. She should’ve been brought in and fingerprinted.”

"That's not me in the body cam video!"
A Layton woman is fighting to get charges dropped after she says this woman fooled officers and impersonated her during a traffic stop.
At 10:00, how she found out about it and what the prosecutor's office is saying really happened @KSL5TV pic.twitter.com/3jUNs5ZXMt

— Ashley Moser (@AshleyMoser) September 28, 2021

So how did this woman get her information?

Castleberry believes her ex-husband, who was also in the car, provided it to the woman.

“He is the one that gave her all my information. He’s the one that told her my Social Security number, my birthday and then she just sat down and memorized it, obviously.”

The woman was issued three misdemeanor charges and since she missed the court appearance in August, a warrant was issued for Castleberry’s arrest.

“If I get picked up on these charges or get arrested, I could lose my CDL. I could lose my job. I mean it could change my whole livelihood,” Castleberry said.

She spent the last week on the phone trying to get the charges removed but said she was given the runaround between the sheriff’s office, the prosecutor’s office and the court.

On Monday, she had her initial court appearance for the charges where a judge removed the warrant and advised her to work with the prosecutor’s office to get the charges removed.

Weber County Sheriff Christopher Allred issued the following statement to KSL:

“The prosecutor assigned to the case was out of town at a conference last week, but he did speak with Castleberry (Monday) at her video court appearance.

“After reviewing the body cam video and comparing it with the person who appeared on video, he believes it is likely the case that the ex-husband’s girlfriend did somehow obtain Castleberry’s information and impersonated her at the time of the stop.

“Therefore, the assigned prosecutor is going to file a motion to dismiss charges against Castleberry and send the matter back to the sheriff’s office to pursue charges against the girlfriend.”

Castleberry said that she was glad progress had been made in the process of getting this off of her record but was concerned other people might not have the same luck.

“I wonder how many people this has happened to that couldn’t get the evidence to prove it wasn’t them,” she said.