An attorney for a boy arrested for reckless riding on his dirt bike has released a video showing Louisiana deputies pulling him off the bike and stomping him.
Attorney Ryan Thompson said the ordeal occurring in February near New Orleans in the community of Belle Chasse, left his client, who is 5 feet 4 and 135 pounds, with a broken leg and concussion.
The sheriff’s office said the level of force the deputies used was required to bring down the young biker who put others in danger and broke multiple traffic laws. Thompson said the deputies went too far. A Plaquemines Parish Sheriff’s Office spokesperson denies the boy was injured as a result.
“He refused reasonable demands to get off of the dirt bike which led to him physically struggling with deputies while avoiding attempts to be handcuffed,” the sheriff’s office said in a lengthy statement on Facebook. “Deputies proceeded to use necessary force to effect the arrest.”
The 12-second dash camera video shows the child riding off to the side behind a patrol vehicle. The deputy in the patrol car behind the camera jumps out the vehicle and pulls the bike onto the ground, which can be seen at the right side of the camera. Another deputy runs full speed from the other patrol vehicle and kicks the boy twice. That deputy points a yellow stun gun at the boy before the clip cuts out.
The boy’s father said he was stomped in the face and head.
“I don’t think they should go to work every morning acting like they’re protecting and serving out here,” the boy’s father said in a video released by Thompson.
WDSU News asked Thompson and the sheriff’s office for a full video of the incident, but it has yet to be released. Thompson released the edited clip to the media on Aug. 25.
The boy’s and the sheriff’s office’s accounts of the incident are different.
The sheriff’s office said the 12-year-old was one of two riders arrested that night among a group of five. The boy was the only one on an off-road dirt bike. His lights were not working, and he was “operating in a reckless manner endangering motorists on Woodland Highway.”
Deputies tried to stop the riders with “both visual and audible signals,” but the sheriff’s office said they refused to stop and continued to create “a public safety hazard by blatantly disregarding numerous traffic laws.”
However, Thompson said his client never resisted or fled officers. The boy said in a video also released by the attorney that he wasn’t sure if the officers wanted him to pull over at first.
“I am looking back wondering if he’s trying to make us leave the area. Is he trying to chase someone else,” he said in the video recalling the Feb. 19 incident.
“No, there was never any resistance,” Thompson said. “My client maintains, we maintain that my client was complying fully with the stop and those officers escalated it using excessive force.”
Once he realized the deputy was trying to pursue him, the boy started to slow down, but he said the other patrol vehicle cut him off so he swerved off the road. The 12-year-old also said the bike fell on him after the first deputy pulled him off.
“I turned the bike off. He jumped out of the car and grabbed me and pulled me off the bike,” he said. “I was on the ground with the bike on me — with a very hot bike on me.”
The sheriff’s office said the boy was nabbed “after his dirt bike became disabled despite his attempts to continue to flee from deputies.”
The deputies did not realize that he was a juvenile until after he was arrested, they said. He was wearing a full-face helmet. The sheriff’s office claims he was also taller than “most deputies that were on the scene.”
The boy was charged with aggravated flight from an officer, resisting arrest and obstruction of a roadway. Thompson said his client did not commit any crimes, and the deputies violated the child’s civil rights. Thompson is calling for deputies to be “fired immediately and arrested.”
However, the sheriff’s office said it reviewed all of the deputies’ actions and “determined all deputies performed their duties within the guidelines of” its policy, “using only the force necessary to subdue the suspects.”
Plaquemines Parish Sheriff’s deputies also arrested Jaiques Wilson, 20, who was riding a four-wheeler and crashed into another vehicle head-on. The sheriff’s office said that Wilson was transported to a local hospital for minor injuries after being booked. The 12-year-old did not report or show any signs of injuries. He was released to his parent, who did not report any issues to the office, the spokesperson said. It is unclear when and how his injuries reported by his attorney were discovered.
The sheriff’s office accused the attorney of stirring up controversy to amplify outrage over another case.
Plaquemines Parish deputies were also involved in a chase on the same highway in May that left a rider and a deputy severely injured. Thompson released a video of the previous incident that shows Reginald Hamilton crashing into a deputy.
“After recently retaining the services of the same legal counsel as Reginald Hamilton, it is clear these allegations are an attempt to present edited, contextualized content to inflame the public’s perception of the facts of these incidents,” the sheriff’s office said. “All the facts of these cases will be presented in a court of law and we are confident the truth will be presented and justice will be served in both cases.”
Hamilton, 18, was in a coma for three days and has a brain injury. The deputy’s leg had to be amputated. Hamilton was charged with attempted murder, but the charge was reduced to aggravated second-degree battery after Thompson released the footage.
The deputies were egging on each other saying, “Smoke ’em. Smoke ‘em,” and they threatened to knock Hamilton off the ATV.
“I’ll f—ing bump you, brah,” one deputy says.
The minor from the February incident said he was triggered by the video of Hamilton’s arrest.
“That really scared me because as soon as I saw that video, I thought that could’ve been me,” he said. “I could’ve been in a coma for a few days.”
