The family of Brianna Grier has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against several members of the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office.
Grier died six days after being dragged from her parents’ Sparta home by a Hancock County Sheriff’s Office deputy. The lawsuit was announced at a news conference in front of the Old Decatur Courthouse on May 24 in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur, Georgia.
After her mother called 911 for help on July 15 for Grier’s schizophrenic episode, the deputies arrived on the scene between midnight and 1 a.m. Deputies reported they found Grier agitated, possibly intoxicated, and banging on her parents’ door demanding to be let in.
They handcuffed Grier before dragging her to a patrol vehicle. The deputies failed to shut the door of the patrol car all the way and secure Grier’s seatbelt, and the 28-year-old fell out of the moving vehicle about 30 seconds after the car began moving while handcuffed.
The mother of twin girls suffered from two skull fractures and was airlifted about 90 miles north to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, where she went into a coma. According to an independent pathology conducted by Dr. Allecia Wilson, Grier died from blunt force trauma to the head and swelling in the brain. She died on July 21.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation finished its investigation last November. Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit District Attorney T. Wright Barksdale III declined to prosecute the deputies.
At the time, Brianna’s adoptive father Marvin Grier told WGXA News that they called the police for help, not death.
“The night that this happened, we called the police for help,” said Mr. Grier. “I mean for help. Not for death.” Mr. Grier died a few months after his daughter.
Civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Eric Hertz are representing Grier’s family and announced they filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Lt. Marlin Primus, Deputy Timothy Legette, and Sheriff Tomlyn Primus, citing gross negligence for the events leading to the young mother’s death.
Crump said at the press conference that the family filed a $100 million excessive force lawsuit against the defendants.
“There is no excuse, no justification why Brianna Grier is dead and why she died in such a horrific manner,“ he said. “Falling out the back of an unsecured police vehicle traveling on the highway, her head colliding with the concrete on the street causing a brain bleed.”
“We want her daughters to know that we fought for her mother,” he continued. “We want her daughters to know that even though the police did not treat her with respect that with this civil lawsuit, we are demanding respect for Brianna Grier. This beautiful young Black mother who was taken from this earth far too soon. … Her life mattered.”
Grier’s sister, Lottie Grier, is helping to raise Brianna’s 4-year-old twin daughters. “She didn’t deserve the way she died,” she said. “To see her babies have to grow up without her, it hurts.”
“Defendants violated the constitutional rights of Brianna Grier, deceased daughter and mother of the Plaintiffs,” reads the lawsuit. “Under the United States Constitution and the laws of the State of Georgia when they unlawfully and willfully seized and restrained the decedent, falsely arrested the decedent, unnecessarily handcuffed the decedent, picked her up and dropped her multiple times, ignored her cries for help and deprived her of medical assistance, caused injury to her head and brain and ultimately caused her death, misrepresented the true facts, and defamed her.”
Grier’s mother, Mary Grier, said that her granddaughters “constantly” asked about their mother and noted her husband’s passing.
“He loved his granddaughters, Maria and Mariah, and he had to suffer because he didn’t want to lie to them about how she died,” she said. “We had to talk about it in a way that they would understand.”
Mary Grier went on to say that the police knew her daughter’s condition prior to the July 15 incident and said the police “carried her out like a log” and “dropped her” before throwing her in the vehicle.
“For them, Hancock County, to do something to her, and they knew her condition. They knew it… I don’t think they did her right. I miss my daughter.”
