News
Police electrocute woman several times despite pleas that she is pregnant
A police officer repeatedly used a stun gun on a woman, Aviana White, even though she begged him not to because she was pregnant, witnesses said.
Trouble started on Monday when a car in which White was riding was pulled over by policemen. The police said the driver, Miles Spears who is White’s brother was speeding and driving without a license.
According to Police Chief Tim Hendricks, the officer on the scene was trying to be helpful by asking for White’s name and license so that she could take the car home, Sun Herald reported.
But the 27-year-old Mississippi woman declined to give her name on the grounds that she is not legally required to do so. This was believed to have angered the officer.
When White and her 21-year-old brother, Miles Spears, got out of the car, the officer ordered them back inside. Spears refused and was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct/failure to comply.
However the woman walked away from the arresting officer and got out her mobile phone to call the Pass Christian Police Department to complain about how she was being treated, Daily News reported.
An eyewitness, Alicia Burton said it was then that the officer “charged” toward White, ignoring the 27-year-old’s desperate pleas.
“I’m pregnant!” Burton recalled White shouting as the officer grabbed her.
White’s mother and Burton also offered their voices, similarly calling out, “Don’t Tase her, she’s pregnant!”
It didn’t matter, Burton told the Sun. The Officer “went to Tasing that girl all over her body.”
White’s mother told the newspaper her daughter was shocked at least three times, including in the abdomen.
Following the incident, White was allowed to go to the hospital to get checked out. She said Tuesday she still had some bruising from the incident.
She was arrested later Tuesday morning around 10 a.m. for assaulting a police officer — a felony charge — and was taken to the Harrison County Jail, the Sun reported.
“She was very defiant with the officer, and that’s what led up to this,” Hendricks said. “The officer asked her repeatedly to stay in the car and she refused to do that.
“I think the charges are justified.”
Burton, who said she was “upset” by the altercation, pushed back against those claims.
“That was a situation that escalated that didn’t have to escalate the way it did,” she said, adding that the cop should have waited for back-up, which had been on the way.
The Police chief of the area said they reviewed 30 minutes of the footage but that they would not be releasing copies so to not compromise the criminal case against White.
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