United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ____________ United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit

No. 22-20621 FILED May 3, 2024 ____________ Lyle W. Cayce Austin Thompson Hughes, Clerk

Plaintiff—Appellee,

versus Michael Garcia; Joshua Few,

Defendants—Appellants. ______________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas USDC No. 4:21-CV-1994 ______________________________ Before Jolly, Engelhardt, and Oldham, Circuit Judges. Andrew S. Oldham, Circuit Judge: For those who worry that qualified immunity can be invoked under absurd circumstances: Buckle up. Austin Thompson Hughes is a Good Samaritan. After 2:30 a.m., Hughes called 911 to report a pickup truck swerving violently across a four- lane highway in Houston. While Hughes was on the phone with emergency dispatchers, the drunk driver crashed. Still on the phone with 911, Hughes pulled behind the drunk driver and effectuated a citizen’s arrest in accordance with Texas law. But when police officers arrived at the scene, Case: 22-20621 Document: 85-1 Page: 2 Date Filed: 05/03/2024

No. 22-20621

they let the drunk driver go and then arrested Good Samaritan Hughes. (Seriously.) Piling insanity on irrationality, the officers then charged Hughes with a felony for impersonating a peace officer. Hughes spent thousands of dollars defending against the frivolous criminal charges before the City of Houston dropped them. Then Hughes brought this § 1983 suit against the two officers who victimized him. The district court denied qualified immunity. We affirm. (Obviously.) I. A. This case arises from a motion to dismiss. So we take the following well-pleaded facts as true. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 677–78 (2009). On March 23, 2019, at approximately 2:37 a.m., Austin Thompson Hughes, a former police officer, was driving for Uber. While driving, he saw a white GMC Sierra pickup truck swerving erratically on Interstate 610 in Houston. Suspecting the truck’s driver was intoxicated, Hughes dialed 911 and followed the Sierra with his Jeep’s flashers on. During the call, Hughes described the Sierra and his own vehicle and reported the truck swerving at high speed, hitting the concrete barriers on both sides of the highway, and finally coming to a stop. Hughes’s two Uber passengers can be heard on the recording confirming Hughes’s observations. Hughes stopped behind the Sierra. At some point during this episode, Hughes’s 911 call was transferred to a Houston Medical 911 call-taker. Hughes continued his report to the second 911 call-taker. He told the call-taker “I need to get [the driver] out of the car because, I mean, they’re going to kill somebody.” ROA.258. Hughes then exited his vehicle, observed that the driver was “obviously intoxicated,” and retrieved the driver’s keys, license (which was sitting in the Sierra’s center cupholder), and bottles of alcohol. A third-party caller corroborated many of these details to another 911

2 Case: 22-20621 Document: 85-1 Page: 3 Date Filed: 05/03/2024

No. 22-20621

oper