Federal marshals arrested Jiya Thomas-Felix in Florissant on June 26, 2026, ending what authorities say was a nearly five-year run from a deadly high-speed crash that killed two people, including her 12-year-old nephew.
According to the U.S. Marshals Service, an arrest warrant was issued for Thomas-Felix on December 8, 2021, charging her with two counts of involuntary manslaughter tied to a December 2020 crash in St. Louis County. St. Louis County police reported that Thomas-Felix was driving at a high rate of speed when she lost control of the vehicle, killing both passengers, one of them her nephew.
The trail that finally led to Florissant started with a very different kind of call. Investigators say the breakthrough came after they reviewed a December 2025 St. Louis County police report involving a weapon-brandishing incident. The couple at the center of that call left the scene in a rideshare, according to the Tampa Free Press.
In May, federal authorities secured search warrants for the rideshare company and pulled account and trip data, which they say pointed to multiple addresses linked to Thomas-Felix and confirmed she had been using an alias. Investigators ultimately tracked her to a residence in Florissant, where U.S. Marshals took her into custody without incident.
How location records helped investigators
Law enforcement has increasingly leaned on rideshare trip logs and account records to develop leads in fugitive cases, and this arrest followed that playbook. At the same time, the wider use of location-based tools has sparked steady legal and privacy fights.
Appellate courts and tech companies have pushed back on broad, dragnet-style geofence warrants that seek data on everyone near a crime scene at a given time. Coverage by Ars Technica has highlighted rulings that restrict those sweeping requests, even as more narrowly targeted search warrants for specific accounts and trips continue to generate investigative leads.
Charges and next steps
The U.S. Marshals Service said Thomas-Felix faces two counts of involuntary manslaughter under the December 8, 2021, St. Louis County arrest warrant. The agency also noted that the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office formally requested Marshals assistance in April 2026.
Officials have not yet released an arraignment date. Further processing and any court appearances will move through St. Louis County’s legal system.
Authorities credited cross-agency cooperation and the careful use of digital records with bringing the long-running case to a close. It was not immediately clear whether relatives of the crash victims had publicly commented on the arrest.
