Following his and his daughter’s unjustified detention at Phoenix International Sky Harbor Airport in April 2025, former Arizona Cardinals linebacker Wesley Leasy vowed to sue Mesa and Phoenix.
On October 6, Leasy filed a notice of claim, which is a prelude to a lawsuit, requesting $1 million in damages for the city and police officers’ carelessness, recklessness, and constitutional and legal infractions.
The majority of the accusation was directed at Mesa police officers, who arrested him upon his arrival at the airport. According to him, Leasy was there to pick up his daughter, 26, who had returned from a work trip in Atlanta.
According to the notice of claim, Leasy and his legal team claimed that Mesa police were careless in their hiring, training, and oversight practices, and that certain rules and processes might be liable.
He claimed that despite his efforts to obtain additional information on the incident, he was only given what had been “publicly reported by the media and one business card” that was given to him by a sergeant who was present at the site.
Leasy told The Arizona Republic that he wanted to find out what had transpired that night, have the various police departments and localities take some responsibility, and receive an apology for being wrongly recognized and taken into custody. He also wanted to make sure that this kind of thing didn’t happen again.
