Mother arrested for taking phone away from teenage daughter

HUDSONVILLE, Michigan (KTRK) -- A Michigan mother arrested after stealing her teen daughter's cell phone as a form of discipline has been vindicated.

The Ottawa County prosecutor dismissed the charges against the woman on Tuesday. However, there are questions as to why she was arrested in the first place.

"I would like answers on why it got so far and how it got this far, where this happened within my home. I'm disciplining my child, then I'm being the one handcuffed," Jodie May told WOOD-TV.

May was nursing her 4-week-old baby the day before Mother's Day, when a deputy knocked on her door, telling her she'd be arrested on a misdemeanor theft charge.

"He had told me that he was going to arrest me, and I asked him if I could turn myself in on that Monday by myself, that I had a new baby. She wasn't taking the bottle yet," she said.

Her proposals weren't granted. She was arrested and taken to a holding cell before being released two hours later on a $200 bond.

May told WOOD-TV that she took her 15-year-old daughter's iPhone 6 away in April after she got in trouble at school. However, Ron Frantz, the prosecutor, said the mom never told original deputies that she'd taken the phone away to punish her daughter. In fact, it was never mentioned in the original report.

The mom, though, claims she did tell the deputy.

May's ex-husband, who reported the alleged theft, told deputies that he owned the phone, but the mom says the phone was a Christmas gift from her ex-husband to her daughter.

"I believe the prosecutor knew the whole time. It was an easy question to have answered," May said.

Just a few short minutes into the trial, the assistant prosecutor announced it was, indeed, the daughter's phone, so the case was dismissed and May left the courthouse with a clean record.