Background: News footage of the Subway sandwich shop in Jacksonville, Fla. (WJAX). Inset: James Anthony Morris Jr. (Jacksonville Sheriff”s Office).
A Florida man who locked a 10-year-old girl in a room at a Subway restaurant will avoid prison time.
James Anthony Morris Jr., 34, pleaded guilty to child abuse on April 30, less than one year after he was charged with false imprisonment of a child under the age of 13. As Law&Crime previously reported, Morris was the manager of a Subway restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida, on July 21, 2025, when a customer’s 10-year-old daughter walked across an area of the floor that Morris had just cleaned.
The girl’s mother told her daughter to apologize to Morris, who grabbed the girl and locked her in a back room.
The mother told police at the time that she thought Morris was joking. But when she went to the door to get her daughter, Morris “pushed the door closed” with the girl behind it. She fought with Morris while her daughter was locked in the room for about two minutes. The girl told police that she “was really scared and thought she was being kidnapped.”
While she was locked in, Morris ranted at the girl, telling her that her parents were “trash and terrible people.”
The mother was eventually able to get her daughter out of the room and called the police.
Morris refused to speak with police, who arrested him at the Subway restaurant, though he bonded out of jail shortly after.
On April 30, Morris pleaded guilty to one count of child abuse. He was sentenced to two days in jail, but received credit for time served, leaving him with no further jail time. He was also sentenced to three years’ probation and ordered to stay away from the victim and her mother. According to online court records, Morris was also ordered to undergo a mental evaluation and a substance abuse evaluation. He was ordered to pay $769 in court fees.
