Man sues Florida officers who severely beat him after foot chase

A Florida man filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against three Jacksonville sheriff’s officers beat him badly last year after he ran from a traffic stop, claiming they used excessive force, resulting in permanent injuries to his head, an eye and a kidney.

Le’Keian Woods, who said he still suffers from migraines and eye pain, is suing Jacksonville officers Hunter Sullivan, Trey McCullough and former officer Josue Garriga for their role on September 29, 2023. seriousness. Sheriff TK Waters has defended the beating as justified.

The beating left Woods with a lacerated kidney, a swollen face and a bloodied lip. A fourth officer, Beau Daigle, is being sued for pointing his gun at Woods, who is seeking unspecified damages.

Attorneys Harry Daniels and Norman Harris accused the officers of targeting 25-year-old Woods and the two friends he was with because they are black. They said the officers used the driver’s inability to wear his seat belt as a pretext to pull over their pickup at gunpoint after Garriga claimed he saw Woods selling cocaine to a man at a gas station. The cocaine charge was later dropped.

“This is a clear case of miscarriage of justice and racial profiling,” Harris said. “This is not a case where law enforcement has seen young men who have warrants for their arrest on charges of violent crimes. This is a case where a stop was initiated based on a seat belt violation and the officers exited with their weapons drawn.”

While his two friends complied with officers’ demands to remain in the truck with their hands visible, Woods fled the scene.

“I got a little scared that he was going to shoot me, that I was in a serious situation, so I ran,” said Woods, who was on probation for theft.

Body camera video shows Sullivan chasing Woods and yelling that he would shoot Woods with his Taser if he didn’t stop. When Sullivan got close enough, he shot Woods twice with the stun gun and Woods fell on his face. Sullivan, Garriga and McCullough punched, elbowed and kneed him in the head and body while trying to get him handcuffed.

Woods, who weighs 1.7 meters and 72 kilograms, writhed and sometimes put one hand or the other behind his back, but then moved the other under him. The much larger officers said they feared he was reaching for a gun. It took them two minutes to put Wood’s handcuffs on him.

Daniels, a former police officer, said that in Florida, kneeing a suspect on the head is considered deadly force, the legal equivalent of shooting someone. It should only be used when lives are at risk. He said federal and state cases will be filed against the sheriff’s office later.

The sheriff’s office declined comment Thursday and the Jacksonville Fraternal Order of Police, the officers’ union, did not return calls seeking comment.

At a news conference three days after Woods’ arrest, Sheriff Waters, who is Black, said body camera footage showed the assault was necessary to prevent Woods from harming officers.

“Just because violence is ugly doesn’t mean it’s illegal,” Waters said at the time. He said no officer would be disciplined.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division cleared the officers, saying their actions “did not rise” to a level where they could be prosecuted under federal law. Daniels said the department did not conduct a proper investigation and the decision will be appealed.

Woods was originally charged with resisting arrest with violence, armed trafficking in cocaine and methamphetamine and other crimes.

But in April, six months after his arrest, prosecutors dropped those charges. He pleaded guilty to resisting arrest without violence for running from the truck and was sentenced to nine days in jail that he had already served. Garriga had not captured Woods’ alleged sale on his video cameras and no other officer had seen it.

“Running from the truck is the only crime he committed that day,” Nicole Jamieson, Woods’ criminal defense attorney, said in a telephone interview Thursday. Just because the officers yelled at Woods to stop resisting arrest as they beat him doesn’t mean he actually was, she said.

Garriga, 34, could not testify against Woods because he pleaded guilty earlier this year to federal charges that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl. He will receive a prison sentence of 10 years to life at a hearing on November 18.

In 2019, Garriga fatally shot a man during a traffic stop because of an unfastened seat belt. Prosecutors found the shooting was justified, and a lawsuit filed by the dead man’s family was later settled for an undisclosed amount. Daniels was the family’s attorney.

Sullivan and his father, who is also a sheriff’s officer in Jacksonville, were suspended in 2020 after they got into an off-duty altercation with a woman at a bar. No criminal charges have been filed.

At the time of the assault, Woods was on probation after pleading no contest to a 2017 robbery in Tallahassee in which he and his roommate tried to hold an illegal marijuana dealer at gunpoint.

The dealer pulled out his own gun and fatally shot the roommate as Woods fled. Woods was originally charged with second-degree murder in the death of his roommate, but a plea deal was reached in 2022 that saw him released without prison time.