Florida man claims sheriff’s ‘Wheel of Fugitive’ video cost him his job
David Gay says he lost his job and was left distressed after a Florida sheriff repeatedly accused him of being a fugitive in social media videos created to resemble the popular television gameshow Wheel of Fortune.
But Gay wasn’t running from the law at any of those times – he was either already in the local jail in connection with a misdemeanor case or had already been released from custody after being given probation.
Now, Gay is suing for damages in excess of $50,000, accusing the sheriff of having defamed him and unduly causing him depression as well as anxiety.
Brevard county sheriff Wayne Ivey, whose office is relatively close to the Orlando area, included Gay’s name and image several times in 2021 in social media posts from his agency that contained videos of him talking about – as well as spinning – his so-called “Wheel of Fugitive”.
The wheel contains the photos and names of those whom Ivey considers to be Brevard’s 10 most wanted fugitives.
“All 10 people up here have warrants for their arrest,” Ivey says in a Wheel of Fugitive video that his office posted on Facebook on 24 January. “We want to get them off the street and safely behind bars where they can’t victimize anyone else.”
After Ivey spins the wheel, he explains the charges against the person whose picture is in a closeup shot of the circular prop after it stops rotating. He urges the purported winner to surrender to his office even as the video explains in a disclaimer scrolling across the bottom of the screen that “suspects may have since been arrested or their alleged charges otherwise resolved or dismissed”.
Gay’s 34-page lawsuit – filed on 25 January in state court in Brevard county – asserts that the plaintiff falls into the “charges otherwise resolved” category.
According to the suit, Gay received a three-year sentence of probation in November 2020 after an undisclosed offense. That case culminated in what is known as a withhold of adjudication, a special sentence in which a defendant is technically not convicted of any crime, the lawsuit explains.
Gay says he was then arrested in January 2021 on a charge of misdemeanor domestic battery. Gay maintains that he was arrested after believing his father had physically fought with his mother, and the case against him was eventually dismissed.
Nonetheless, the battery accusation alone was a violation of the Gay’s terms of probation, so he was jailed. And he was also housed in Ivey’s lockup all three times when the sheriff went on camera and called him a fugitive, the lawsuit contends.
When the sheriff put him on the Wheel of Fugitive for the fourth time, Gay had by that time been sentenced to probation under the same terms as before his January 2021 arrest, had been released from custody and was in no way considered wanted.
It’s unlikely that Gay’s legal troubles would’ve gotten much attention but for his inclusion on the Wheel of Fugitive. At one point, a new employer of his watched at least one of the videos, called Gay as he was driving to what was supposed to be their first day of work together, and told him that he would not start the job after all because he was on the Wheel of Fugitive, according to the lawsuit.
Attempts to contact the Brevard sheriff’s office for comment about Gay’s lawsuit weren’t successful on Tuesday.
Ivey told the Associated Press that Wheel of Fugitive is quite popular. He reportedly said that “even the fugitives watch” the videos to see if they’re “fugitive of the week”, according to CBS News.