citation dropped – A Palm Beach County traffic citation against Kathleen Thomas, a Florida fitness influencer with a missing right hand, was dismissed after bodycam footage showed she wasn’t holding a phone in a nonexistent hand. The $116 ticket was thrown out for insufficient e
When Kathleen Thomas lifted her right arm on camera, it wasn’t a performance—it was proof. The viral moment came after a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office deputy pulled her over on Feb. 11, accusing her of texting and driving while holding a phone in her right hand.
Court records now show the citation has been dropped. On May 27, the deputy who issued the ticket asked the local traffic court to dismiss the $116 charge due to “insufficient evidence,” according to court records obtained by a newspaper part of the USA TODAY Network.
The case turned on what the bodycam video captured and what Thomas insisted all along. The deputy accused Thomas of “manipulating” her phone in her right hand. even after she showed him she doesn’t have a right hand. Thomas said in the wake of the stop. She shared the bodycam footage on social media.
On May 28, Thomas posted a TikTok video reacting to the dismissal. “Bruh, we knew that already,” she said, smiling and lifting her right arm again.
Thomas, of Lake Worth Beach, Florida, was cited under the state’s texting-while-driving law. She told the court through the video record of the encounter that the premise of the stop—holding a phone in a right hand—could not be true.
The footage described by the reporting shows the deputy confronting Thomas during the stop. Thomas held up her right arm, which is missing a hand, and responded, “So obviously not. You wanna just call this a day?”
But the deputy didn’t drop the accusation right away. “You had a hand up,” he continued, according to the bodycam footage. “I thought I saw your right hand.”
After Thomas explained again that she doesn’t have a right hand, the deputy asked, “Hand to God, you did not have a phone in your hand?” Thomas answered, “Hand to God.”
The interaction didn’t end the moment the deputy asked for proof. He still asked Thomas for her driver’s license and vehicle registration.
All of it played out against a wider public backdrop: Thomas has more than 468. 000 Instagram followers and is described as a Florida fitness influencer. In April. she placed second in the adaptive female division at the HYROX fitness racing competition in Miami. and she posted training videos earlier in the year.
The sequencing here matters: the deputy issued a texting-while-driving citation on the premise that Thomas was holding a phone in her right hand, Thomas demonstrated during the stop that she doesn’t have one, and the court ultimately dismissed the $116 ticket on May 27 for “insufficient evidence.”
The dismissal didn’t silence the story. Thomas said in an Instagram video shared May 27 that she will appear on CBS Morning on May 29 to discuss the incident.
Kathleen Thomas one-handed driver texting and driving bodycam footage Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Lake Worth Beach $116 ticket dismissed HYROX fitness influencer