How Stephanie Thomas and Ned Lamont lied about a woman’s safety to shut down questions

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Here is what Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas and Governor Ned Lamont want you to believe: Reckless conservatives grabbed the identity of an innocent New Britain woman, falsely connected her to a fatal crash, accused her of voter fraud and unleashed death threats against her—all because nobody bothered to verify a Facebook post.

There is just one problem.

That is not how this started. Not even close.

The story began around 2:45 in the morning on July 13, when a Jeep Compass crossed the double yellow line on Sugar Hollow Road in Danbury and struck a Harley-Davidson head-on. Off-duty Bridgeport Police Officer Cooper Whiteside, 38, and Brittany Islami, a 34-year-old mother of three, were killed.

The driver of the Jeep was Melissa Esperanza Ramirez-Romero, 27, of Stamford. According to the evidence described in the arrest warrant, her blood-alcohol level was 0.14—nearly twice the legal limit. She also tested positive for cannabis. Police reported finding empty Corona containers and a THC vape in the vehicle. She was charged with two counts of second-degree manslaughter with a motor vehicle, DUI and other offenses. She has pleaded not guilty.

She is also in the country illegally, and ICE lodged a detainer against her.

Those are not rumors. They are not Facebook inventions. They are the essential facts of a case in which two people are dead.

But eleven days after the crash, Danbury police filed an arrest warrant containing another significant detail: It said the defendant had a valid Connecticut driver’s license connected to a New Britain address.

That is where the confusion began.

The license number and address in that sworn warrant matched the records of another Melissa Ramirez—a United States citizen living in New Britain who reportedly shares the same date of birth as the defendant.

Think about that for a moment. The public did not hallucinate a connection between the two women. A Facebook detective did not pull it out of thin air. The connection appeared in an official document submitted by law enforcement in a double-fatality prosecution.

Reporters and Republican lawmakers saw the warrant information and began asking an obvious question: How did an undocumented woman accused of driving without a license end up connected to the license and voter information of a citizen in New Britain?

That is not “misinformation.” That is journalism. That is oversight. That is exactly the kind of question elected officials should ask when government records do not add up.

We now know there are two different women. The Department of Motor Vehicles says the Stamford defendant has never held a Connecticut-issued license or identification card. The Secretary of the State’s office says she has never been registered to vote in Connecticut. The voter record belongs to the New Britain citizen.

Fine. That answers the voter-registration question.

It does not explain away the warrant.

Danbury Police Chief Patrick Ridenhour acknowledged that the warrant contained incorrect information. The explanation offered later was that the defendant provided her name and birthdate at the hospital, a law-enforcement database returned the New Britain woman’s information and the two identities became merged.

That is a serious government-records failure in a case involving two deaths. It should have been the center of the official response.

Instead, Thomas and Lamont made conservatives, Republican lawmakers and social-media users the villains.

Thomas accused people of accepting a “Facebook post narrative” and rushing to advance a political agenda. She said screenshots were altered or presented in a way that falsely connected the voter record to the defendant. Lamont complained that misinformation had caused an innocent woman’s personal information to spread online and exposed her to threats.

Both officials lectured the public about slowing down and verifying information.

That would be excellent advice for the government officials who put the wrong woman’s license information into a sworn warrant.

It would also be excellent advice before claiming that the New Britain woman was receiving death threats.

According to the New Britain police report, officers located the woman after a welfare check was requested. She identified herself with her license and told police that she was not receiving death threats. She said she felt safe. Her main complaint was that journalists kept calling her.

Journalist Dan Haar, who had spoken with her, reportedly confirmed to police that she had not described receiving death threats from anyone.

So where did the official death-threat narrative come from?

That matters because the alleged threats were not some minor detail in the Thomas-Lamont response. They were the emotional centerpiece. They transformed a legitimate controversy over a faulty warrant into a morality play about dangerous conservatives terrorizing an innocent woman.

But the woman herself reportedly told police that the threats were not happening.

There is another irony here. The first formal police involvement concerning those alleged threats came after a conservative radio source requested a welfare check to make sure the woman was safe. In other words, the people being portrayed as reckless were among those trying to determine whether the claim was true.

None of this proves that the Stamford defendant registered or voted. The official record says she did not, and that should be stated plainly.

But that was never the only issue.

The larger issue is how government officials responded after their own system produced a warrant connecting an undocumented DUI defendant to a citizen’s license information and, through that information, an active voter record.

They could have said: “The warrant was wrong. Here is how the wrong identity was inserted. Here is how we are correcting it, and here is what we are doing to make sure it does not happen again.”

That would have been transparency.

Instead, they attacked the people who noticed the discrepancy.

Thomas said elected officials and members of the media should have contacted her office before drawing conclusions. But Republican lawmakers were publicly demanding the records and asking the administration for answers before her July 30 statement. Seeking the records is verification. Asking questions is verification. Filing Freedom of Information requests is verification.

The government does not get to publish faulty information in a sworn document and then accuse the public of recklessness for reading it.

And Lamont does not get to invoke threats against an innocent woman without explaining why that same woman reportedly told police she was not receiving them.

The crash is not in dispute. The defendant’s immigration status is not in dispute. The reported alcohol and drug evidence is not in dispute. The DMV says she never had a Connecticut license, and the Secretary of the State says she was never registered to vote here.

What remains in dispute is the story Thomas and Lamont told about how this controversy began and who was responsible for it.

It did not begin with conservatives inventing a connection on Facebook.

It began when the government put the wrong woman’s information in a sworn arrest warrant.

Before Stephanie Thomas and Ned Lamont lecture anyone else about slowing down, checking the facts and correcting misinformation, they should start with the paperwork produced by their own government.

The public did not create this mess.

The public caught it.

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