Gulfport mom jailed, shipped in cuffs to TN over crime she never committed
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- Gulfport resident Kameca Locks was jailed for 25 days due to ID theft charges.
- Locks filed a lawsuit alleging negligence by State Farm and related parties.
- Misfiled insurance policy linked Locks' car to another woman’s personal data.
Kameca Locks, a mother of two who works in health care and lives in Gulfport, spent 25 days in jail without knowing why.
She was scared. And she was exhausted. It’s hard to sleep in jail. The 39-year-old spent Thanksgiving 2021 in the Harrison County jail, missing her stepfather’s smoked turkey, her mom’s miniature pecan pies and, most of all, her two pre-teen children.
After 16 days in the Harrison County jail, she was hauled to jail in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. She rode with other inmates in a van that was pitch dark inside, a belly chain wrapped around her waist and hands cuffed behind her back. The trip seemed to last forever.
Her mom, a retired teacher’s aide, borrowed money to hire an attorney. Her boyfriend arranged her bond. Free after nine days in the Tennessee jail, she finally found out from the Tennessee lawyer why she had been charged with felony identity theft.
Except Locks hadn’t stolen anyone’s identity, court records show. Instead, she had signed up for auto insurance with State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. Today, Locks is suing State Farm, the agent whose office sold her the policy and the woman whose identify she was accused of stealing.
Gulfport attorneys Michael Crosby and Matt Quinlivan are representing her in the Harrison County Circuit Court case. Her lawsuit accuses State Farm, the insurance office agent and the woman who filed identify theft charges in Tennessee of negligence and malicious prosecution.
Locks was indicted in July 2021 in Tennessee for identify theft. Months later, a fender bender at her daughter’s school led to her arrest on the warrant.
“I didn’t even know all of this was going on behind my back because nobody ever called me and told me anything,” Locks told the Sun Herald in a recent interview. “I just know, probably to this day, if I never would have had the accident, I probably still would be riding around with this warrant over my head, not even knowing it was going on.”
Where Gulfport woman’s nightmare started
Locks needed auto insurance. In November 2020, she called the State Farm office of Bryan Jacobs in downtown Gulfport. She gave all her information to a sales representative, including her address and the vehicle identification number unique to her 2016 Honda CRV. Locks also provided her debit card number, paying $189.75 for insurance.
When she didn’t receive insurance cards or a policy in the mail, she called the office and was told they had no record of a policy under her name. They did find a policy for her vehicle under the name Kanika Willis, State Farm records show.
In sworn testimony, Locks said she then asked: “So, you’re telling me this whole time I didn’t have insurance? They was like, ‘Well, your car is insured, but not in your name.’ I said, ‘Well, that is my car, but that’s not my information. That’s not me. I’m not Kanika Willis.’ ”
Locks purchased a second policy to make sure she was driving with insurance under her name. State Farm’s records show Locks tried unsuccessfully to get a refund on the first policy.
Alarm bells went off for Willis when she got an email about her State Farm policy in late December 2020. She didn’t have a State Farm policy, her sworn pretrial testimony showed. She found out from State Farm that one of her old addresses and other personal information was attached to an active policy.
The agent told her that her personal information could have come from an old insurance quote requested online. Willis cancelled the policy. Willis also wanted to make sure her personal information had not been stolen.
She learned from the Mississippi Department of Revenue that some of her information was attached to a Honda CRV and the VIN number for that car. She said during the testimony that a DOR employee advised that she might want to file a police report to “avoid future liability.”
Willis filed the police report with the Mufreesboro Police Department. In response to a subpoena, the investigator swore in pretrial testimony that State Farm produced the insurance policy issued in Willis’ name, along with the application. The insurer did not provide the policy issued to Locks, although the subpoena requested any information on the Honda CRV and listed its VIN number. State Farm also did not turn over any financial information that would have shown Locks’ payments on the insurance policies.
In response to the lawsuit, Willis has denied any wrongdoing. Her attorney did not respond to a message from the Sun Herald about the case.
State Farm has said in legal filings that the company is not responsible for Locks’ legal woes and had nothing to do with pressing or filing identify theft charges against her. A company spokesman told the Sun Herald in an email, “The filing of a lawsuit does not substantiate the allegations made within it. As the matter is now in litigation, it is not appropriate to respond further at this time.”
Jailed in MS, TN after fender bender
Locks was late for work at a senior care home when she dropped her daughter off for school the morning of the fender bender. She and another parent backed into one another. Locks called police to file a report. Neither driver, she later said, was found at fault.
An officer checked her vehicle information, she said in an interview with the Sun Herald, and told her there was a warrant out of Tennesse for her arrest. “I’m like, ‘A what?’ “ she said.
Locks had never been in trouble with the law. She worked hard and was planning a return to school to become a registered nurse. In addition to her regular job, she supplemented her family’s income through a staffing agency that gave her nursing assistant assignments.
At the Harrison County jail, she was subjected to a humiliating strip search and cavity check, then issued a black-and-white striped jumpsuit. She had to call the senior care home and tell them she would miss work because she was in jail.
COVID was an issue, so she spent seven days on lockdown, leaving the cell for only an hour a day for showers and phone calls.
Once out of lockdown, Locks slept on a thin mattress on the floor until space became available in a cell. She had a few toiletries and food she bought at the commissary with money her family sent, but the food kept disappearing. She didn’t want to get in a fight, so Locks didn’t make an issue of the thievery.
She worried constantly about her children. She had tickets to take them to Disney on Ice over the holidays and now they would miss it.
They wanted to know when she would be home. She couldn’t bear the thought of telling them the truth. Would they think she was a criminal? Her mother was keeping the children, but she worried what they looked like when they went to school. She loved to fix her daughter’s hair in the mornings, often French braiding it or getting other ideas off Pinterest, a social media site that offers design inspiration.
“To this day,” she recently told the Sun Herald, “they do not know I was arrested. I guess I feel like it would be too much for them.”
In jail, she was so cold that she bought thermal underwear from the commissary, but it was taken away from her at the Tennessee jail, where she also froze.
When she finally got released Dec. 13, 2020, and saw her attorney in Tennessee, he asked if the name Kanika Willis meant anything. Yes, it did. It was the name of the woman who had mistakenly been issued her insurance policy, she said. She had tried to contact Willis back then, without any luck.
Locks had to make numerous trips back to Tennessee before the charge against her was dismissed almost a year later. She had lost her full-time job after missing work while in jail and was unable to secure another one because of the felony charge on her record.
She did continue to find assignments from the staffing agency because she had passed a background check there before she was arrested.
Locks said she has received no apology from State Farm or Jacobs. She filed her lawsuit in November 2023.
She’s asking for damages to compensate her for her losses, including employment opportunities, expenses, and pain and suffering. The judge, Christopher Schmidt, has already ruled out punitive damages against the defendants.
Locks’ current Honda, she said during pretrial questioning, is insured with a different company.
“I just couldn’t continue to pay State Farm my money,” she said, “knowing what they had done to me.”
This story was originally published September 15, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
