Grandmother Mistaken For Man Ends up in Male Jail Cell

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A Dominican grandmother arrested on a decades-old cocaine possession charge said she was placed in an open cell with about 40 male inmates who taunted her in a Miami-Dade jail, her lawyer said.

Veloz Fior de Pichardo, who is an attorney in the Dominican Republic, was coming to Miami for the birth of her grandchild when she was arrested Nov. 4 on a federal warrant for a drug charge filed 25 years ago, her family said. Following her arrest, a medical nurse who examined her concluded that she was a man, and she ended up housed with male inmates at Miami-Dade Corrections’ Metro West Detention Center near Doral.

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Paredes said they went to the jail telling guards she was a woman but at first no one listened.

"I talked to them to many times – she's woman, she's a woman – and they told me no, this (is) a man," he stated.

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