Chila Lati says she didn't do it. Not only didn't do it, could not possibly have done it.
She was arrested for assaulting a New York City traffic agent after she was issued a ticket on Avenue U in Sheepshead Bay.
But she says she was actually entering her neighborhood, Yeshiva, minutes before the incident allegedly took place.
The traffic agent claims she wrote the ticket and was almost immediately confronted by the driver, who came storming out of a pharmacy on the corner. In a rage, the driver allegedly drove-off and ran over the ticket agent's foot in the process.
The pharmacist provided a name to the ticket agent and after she was arrested, the agent picked Ms. Lati out of a lineup.
Lati's attorney says there are no independent eyewitnesses to the confrontation. Her attorney adds that the vehicle's license plate isn't even close to the one on Lati's car.
What's more, he claims, the police arrested the wrong Chila Lati, which is plausible in this tight-knit immigrant community of Syrian Jews.
It's left this Chila Lati confused and afraid because much of the case appears to be based on the traffic agent's witness identification.
