Man left with third degree burns after cops ‘cooked’ him on scorching asphalt

An Arizona man was left with third-degree burns over much of his body and no skin above his knees after police officers pinned him to the ground in record heat.

Surveillance footage shows 30-year-old Michael Kenyon talking on a cell phone and walking in a parking lot in Phoenix on July 6 when police pull up in a police truck.

Two officers were seen getting out of the vehicle as Kenyon put his phone away.

Within minutes, the officers could be seen trying to handcuff him, and a scuffle ensued between Kenyon and police.

Two backup officers then arrived on the scene, and the four officers held Kenyon on the asphalt for more than four minutes as temperatures in the city reached 114 degrees Fahrenheit, while the asphalt was estimated to be between 180 and 200 degrees. according to CBS News.

Finally, the officers handcuffed Kenyon and lifted him off the asphalt as they escorted him into the police vehicle.

Cellphone footage taken from a nearby balcony also showed Kenyon shouting: “Please, please, I can’t move, I haven’t done anything.” KGUN reports.

He ended up spending more than a month in the hospital with burns to his face, arms, chest and legs, and chunks of skin missing above his knees.

“Time and time again, the Phoenix Police Department has shown a total disregard for human life,” said attorney Bobby DiCello.

“This young man was burned to the third degree because his skin was cooked on asphalt.”

Kenyon later told ABC 15 that he believed officers stopped him because his roommate had recently reported a theft from their home across the street.

“So I walked up to them with my phone in my hand and said, ‘Hey, what happened?’ or “What’s going on?”

At that point, he said, two officers grabbed both of his wrists.

“They said to me in a mean, hostile way, ‘You’re being held,’” Kenyon said.

‘But I said, ‘I’m on the phone. What do you mean. I didn’t do anything. Please explain it to me.’ And they said, “Why are you getting restless? Why do you seem nervous?” I said, ‘It’s not. You’re scaring me. Can you please explain it to me? Let me sit down. Let me sit down.'”

“I sat on the back of some random person’s tailgate,” he said.

‘They said, ‘Give me your arms. Stop resisting.’ And then I think five people came up to me… and I just screamed for help. And I think this is literal [how] George Floyd literally felt like it.

“And then I think: this is it, this is me, this is where I think I’ll stay… This is the end.”

He said the pain was unbearable, “like going through hell and Hades… it feels like your skin is melting away.”

“The lady across the street from the apartment said she thought an animal was dying,” Kenyon said of the woman who recorded the incident on her cell phone.

‘That’s why she looked out the window. And then she started recording me.”

After lying on the scalding ground for a while, Kenyon said he began to think he deserved the torture.

‘Deep inside I think to myself, ‘I’ve had a bad past, I don’t deserve a lot of good things in my life. So I think maybe I deserved this, you know.’

He had an outstanding warrant at the time for failing to appear on a weapons charge, but Kenyon said he was unaware of the warrant — and Phoenix police later confirmed that officers on the scene didn’t know either.

While he was hospitalized for more than a month, Kenyon said officers were stationed at the hospital for several days, possibly a week, and often kept him handcuffed.

“They were just outside the room,” Kenyon said. “They had that little clicker thing with the blinds [where they could look through].

“They wouldn’t let me use my phone or contact my family… It took police officers breaking the rules to let me use my phone.”

He claimed the officers eventually left after a friend called lawyers who showed up at the hospital.

“He didn’t commit a crime, he was never charged with a crime,” attorney Bobby DiCello told CBS News. “And he spent more than a month in a burn unit with police peeking through the windows to see what he was doing.”

The attorneys have since filed a claim, saying Kenyon will settle for $15.53 million or face suing the city in federal court.

‘Michael Kenyon is thirty years old. With an average life expectancy, he should live another 42 years. that is 15,330 days,” the notice of claim said, according to KGUN.

“We are confident that none of you would choose to live in Michael’s disfigured body and traumatized mind for a thousand dollars a day, and we are confident that a jury will agree that this is a modest amount for what the Phoenix police did to him. .’

Police are then accused of lacking training, engaging in unconstitutional practices and creating a culture of violence – all findings from a scathing Justice Department investigation released in June.

“The rejection by the mayor and the city council of the findings of the Ministry of Justice has already been widely publicized,” the statement of claim said.

‘But this situation cannot be reconciled with any situation [belief] that this is a department that is even minimally professional, accountable, or respectful of the residents it is charged with ‘serving and protecting’.”

Attorneys representing Kenyon also wrote that they had “little doubt” that officers decided to hook him up “due to a lack of training and supervision.”

‘Indeed, the 1,147 pages of Operational Orders show that not a single word is mentioned about the serious risk of injury that arises when test subjects are held against the pavement.’

Police have previously alleged that Kenyon struggled with officers, prompting them to push him to the ground.

The matter remains under internal police investigation, a city spokesperson told KGUN, declining to comment on the claim.