A Pennsylvania mother is planning to sue the Tullytown Police Department for allegedly torturing her 14-year-old son with a Taser while he was handcuffed, Raw Story reported.
Marissa Sargeant revealed graphic images of her son bruised, cut and swollen after he was arrested by police for shoplifting at Walmart, along with another relative.
While she acknowledges that what her son did was wrong, she does not think he should have been brutalized by police. “The picture speaks a thousand words,” Sargeant told NBC10, after sharing several graphic photos that shows the extent of the attack on her son.
Yet, the police give a different account of how events transpired.
According to Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler, the Tullytown officers fired a Taser and hit the boy in the face after he escaped from their police car following his arrest.
Heckler said that police yelled warnings at the teen and fired a stun gun to subdue him because they were “fearing for his safety,” NBC10 reported.
Still, Sargeant isn’t buying it. She speculates that officers beat her son and then bullied him into slience:
“That doesn’t sound right. There’s no way, if he was running from behind, that he would get hit with a taser in the front of his face,” she observed.
The boy was taken directly to hospital for treatment.
“I just want some justice. I even pray for the police officers because they need help,” said Sargeant.
The boy’s family has hired an attorney who will file a complaint against the police department.