Georgia mom sues over arrest tied to son’s small-town walk
The Georgia mom whose arrest made national headlines and sparked parenting debates across the country has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the local sheriff, Fannin county government and the deputies who arrested her.
In their lawsuit, Brittany Patterson and her husband said the Fannin County deputies who arrested her for reckless conduct violated her Fourth Amendment rights when they took her son, Soren, into their custody, went into her home without her permission and later arrested her for reckless conduct.
The local prosecutor dropped the charge against her months later. But the incident deeply affected her and her family, she said in the suit.
Soren was a homeschooled 10-year-old at the time and often roamed their 16-acre property or visited nearby friends in their small town of Mineral Bluff — which boasts a population of roughly 300 people. That October day in 2024, he walked alone into town: A stop sign intersection with a Dollar General, a church, a storefront and a post office.
A woman called 911, after which deputies brought the boy home and asked him questions, including about when he had last eaten, according to the lawsuit. Patterson said in the suit deputies should have left him alone after determining he wasn’t in danger, wasn’t in distress and wasn’t truant from school.
Instead, they then entered her home while she wasn’t there, searched her kitchen and noted aloud there was food present, which “constituted an unreasonable search of the residence conducted without a warrant, without valid consent from a person with authority, and without any legal justification,” she said in the suit.
David DeLugas, Patterson’s attorney, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that body camera footage shows the deputies entering the home and searching the kitchen.
“They had no purpose to go into the house — none,” DeLugas said in an interview with the AJC.
The suit, filed Thursday, alleges false arrest and malicious prosecution, unreasonable seizure of a minor, and unlawful entry and search, all under the Fourth Amendment. It also includes one count of failure to train and supervise and unconstitutional custom or policy, and rights violations under Georgia law.
No responses have yet been filed in the court docket, and the defendants have weeks to reply. Fannin County Sheriff Dane Kirby did not respond to a request for comment from the AJC on Monday. A call and email to Fannin County Commission Chairman Jamie Hensley went unanswered.
Patterson said the deputies’ actions also resulted from “inadequate training and supervision” on the “limits of a welfare check once a child is confirmed safe.”
Deputies obtained an arrest warrant for Patterson, which alleged she “willingly and knowingly did endanger the bodily safety of her juvenile son” because she left home not knowing where he was and did not report him missing to law enforcement.
DeLugas said the arrest warrant “has factual allegations in it that are not true” and omits that the child wasn’t in any actual danger.
Body camera footage from Patterson’s arrest showed the deputies handcuffing her at her front door.
“The last time I checked, it wasn’t illegal for a kid to walk to the store,” Patterson said in the video.
“It is when they’re 10 years old,” the deputy responded.
DeLugas has pushed back on that. He is the executive director of the nonprofit legal advocacy organization ParentsUSA and has represented other parents in similar cases. He says too many parents have faced arrest and even prosecution simply because people disagree with their parenting choices.
Patterson’s family has “ongoing trauma” stemming from the arrest, she said in a news release. Her son blamed himself for the ordeal, and her oldest child felt fearful when driving past sheriff’s deputies, she said in the news release.
The arrest prompted a visit from the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services with a safety plan requiring a GPS tracker be placed on Soren’s phone, which Patterson declined to sign, the AJC reported at the time.
The family even moved out of Fannin County because of the incident, DeLugas said.
“It didn’t make sense that an ordinary walk could end with their mother being taken away, a DFCS invasion of their lives and privacy that they still haven’t recovered from, and ongoing trauma years after the incident,” Patterson said in the news release. “Maybe this will prevent future families from being traumatized and feeling unsafe in their own homes and communities.”