A years-long search ended Wednesday in Florissant, Missouri, when federal marshals arrested a woman wanted for a 2020 high-speed car crash that killed two people, including her young nephew.
Jiya Thomas-Felix faces two counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the fatal accident. A warrant for her arrest was originally issued on December 8, 2021, in St. Louis County, but authorities were unable to locate her for years.
According to reports from the St. Louis County Police Department, the charges stem from a December 2020 incident where Thomas-Felix was driving at a high rate of speed. She lost control of the vehicle and crashed, resulting in the deaths of two passengers. One of the victims was a 12-year-old boy, who was identified as her nephew.
With the warrant approaching its fifth year without a resolution, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office formally requested help from the U.S. Marshals Service in April 2026 to locate and apprehend Thomas-Felix.
The breakthrough in the case came when federal investigators reviewed a separate St. Louis County police report from December 2025 involving a weapon brandishing call. During that incident, a relative told police that Thomas-Felix and her boyfriend pointed a gun at a minor child during an argument. The couple fled the scene before local officers arrived, but the reporting relative noted that they left the area in a rideshare vehicle. The investigation also revealed that Thomas-Felix had been evading law enforcement by using an alias consisting of her sister’s identifying information.
In May, U.S. Marshals investigators obtained a series of search warrants targeting the rideshare company. The records provided investigators with a list of addresses associated with Thomas-Felix’s accounts.
Using the location data gathered from those rideshare records, investigators tracked Thomas-Felix to a specific residence in Florissant, where she was taken into custody without further incident.
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