Terria Myrick spent a night in jail when she was accused of shoplifting at a Westside Walmart in a mistaken identity case because of identity theft.

The charges against her have since been dropped, but she's still upset about what happened in July.

"Either way you look at it, it was definitely not me," the 32-year-old wife and mother said. "You can see that as soon as you turn on the video."

Three employees at the Walmart told police it was Myrick who ripped them off. So a judge issued an arrest warrant, and an officer took Myrick to jail.

But Walmart released the surveillance video, and the charges were dropped because it was clear neither of the women seen in the video were Myrick.

Video:

Myrick was arrested because her driver's license was one of the shoplifter's purse.

"It sounds like they were negligent in fulfilling all their responsibilities to make sure that they go after the right person," Channel 4 crime analyst Ken Jefferson said.

He said a big concern is how easily an innocent person was thrown in jail overnight. And he doesn't blame the officers involved.

"The person responsible for going out and arresting this person possibly could have been more diligent, looking at the picture on the driver's license, then reviewing that video," Jefferson said. "But they did everything in good faith based upon the evidence presented to them by the store."

The larger issue comes from how Myrick's driver's license got into the wrong hands.

Her lawyer, Dexter Davis, says she turned in the license to the Department of Motor Vehicles 10 days prior to the Walmart theft while she worked out car insurance issues.

"Whether an employee did something wrong, whether someone came in there, saw a driver's license and took it, whether they put it in the garbage and somebody pulled it out, I can only speculate," Davis said. "But I do know she turned it in. As evidence, she got an ID card that day, which shows the date."

Jefferson and Davis said that ID theft threatens everybody, especially if not all the evidence is considered.

"ID theft is real, live, active right now," Jefferson said. "Right now, somebody's ID is being compromised as we speak."

"I don't have the words. It would be a terrible feeling to be arrested and accused of something I didn't do when you know you didn't do anything wrong," Davis said.

Walmart did not comment on this story, other than to say "We're doing research on it right now."

The state Department of Motor Vehicles has also not commented yet.