Georgia deputy sheriffs were looking for a white suspect from Kentucky and ended up mistakenly arresting a 49-year-old Black woman with the same name (but different spelling). She was arrested in front of her grandson, and was charged with elder abuse, and was imprisoned for three days.
On December 21, 2024, a few days before Christmas, Nickie Sledge of Lithonia, Georgia, claimed she was perplexed when Rockdale County deputies showed up to a movie theater in Conyers. She and her 5-year-old grandson were watching a movie when the arrest happened. She was lured outside of the theatre with a text saying her card was struck in the parking lot. Civil rights attorney Harry M. Daniels, who is representing her, gave the details to Atlanta Black Star.
“Elder abuse? My elderly mother lives with me. I’m being punked,” she recalled telling them, reported WSB. “No ma’am, you’re not being punked,” a female deputy sternly replied.
After being patted down and loaded into a patrol car, she was driven to the county jail, where she underwent processing and a strip search. Her grandson was driven to the local police station in a different patrol car. The deputies were carrying a warrant for Nikki Sledge, a 43-year-old white woman from Covington, Kentucky, who was wanted on two counts of exploitation, abuse, and neglect of the elderly or disabled.
Law enforcement was looking for a white woman named Nikki Sledge from Kentucky, but arrested a Black woman with the same name from Georgia, an attorney said. https://t.co/OBlAqreDWS
— 11Alive News (@11AliveNews) October 29, 2025
Since the warrant was obtained in Cherokee County, Sledge was taken to the county prison facility there at two in the morning and subjected to another strip search. “I knew they had the wrong person,” she said. “But it’s like, how am I going to prove it?”
After spending three days in the Cherokee County Jail, she eventually looked at the case report and saw that the accused was a white woman six years younger. When she brought this to her jailers’ attention, they notified a supervisor.
However, she still had to wait to appear before a judge, who read the report and remarked, “It says on here ‘family violence,'” according to Sledge. Well, it’s obvious to me that she is unrelated.
The bedridden grandpa of Nikki Sledge’s husband, Joshua Sledge, was the victim of an elder abuse case. According to the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office case report that Daniels gave reporters.
“Nickie Sledge,” 49, GA
“Nikki Sledge” 43, KY@HappilyAngryEsq 🫠 https://t.co/OAIMhodWrq pic.twitter.com/LkJkxWhhGX
— Katt (@KattN0tWilliams) November 1, 2025
It claimed that while his wife was in the hospital, the cancer-stricken man, who lived in Woodstock, Georgia, had been neglected by Nikki and Joshua Sledge of Kentucky. The Sledges were charged with using his credit cards fraudulently to purchase $3,500 worth of merchandise at Walmart.
Daniels told Atlanta Black Star he is likely to file a civil suit on her behalf against Cherokee County seeking compensation for the “nightmare ordeal” she experienced. “Someone has to answer for what happened here,” he said.
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“This is a person that has no criminal record. She’s a hard-working, taxpaying citizen, a law-abiding citizen, and all of a sudden, on a good day, happy day, spending time with your grandchild you get arrested, you get taken away, ripped,” said Daniels. “Your freedom of liberty is taken away, all because somebody didn’t do their job.”
On Wednesday, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office released a statement that it had just become aware of the matter and had “not yet received any communications from Ms. Sledge or her attorney, nor have we been served with any civil papers related to this incident. However, we take this matter very seriously and are actively reviewing the situation to understand what occurred.”
