CHEROKEE COUNTY, GA – The family of a Cherokee County teen has hired an attorney and is filing a formal complaint after they say two Cherokee County Sheriff’s deputies used excessive force arresting him.
Part of the incident was caught on cell phone video by a witness and given to CBS46.
“When the video first starts, the first thing you hear is the sound of taser…you’ve got a small young kid face down on the ground with handcuffs on his back with two Cherokee County Sheriff’s deputies on his back…and you hear, ‘Please, please, I can’t breathe,’” attorney Kyle Koester described to CBS46 while watching the video.
Koester was hired by the mom of the teen being arrested in this video, 19-year-old Daniel Fruhling, right after she saw the witness’s cell phone footage.
“When you hear a child scream for help and all they continue to do is hurt him, it is very gut wrenching,” contended Jeanette McDonald.
McDonald claims her son was on the ground handcuffed behind his back when he was tased repeatedly.
“I don’t understand how someone can call for medical help and how it can go to that,” McDonald argued.
The incident happened just off of Cumming Highway and Old Orange Mill Road on Aug. 1 around 8 a.m. A woman inside a home noticed a young man in a truck passed out behind the wheel in her driveway. She came outside and tried to wake him up and when she couldn’t, she called 911 in hopes that someone would come and revive him.
The teen’s attorney didn’t want him to speak to us about what happened or speak about why he was passed out that morning, but he did say this:
“This opioid epidemic is not something we can jail our way out of…there was no care or concern at all for his medical needs. It was purely an effort of law enforcement to make sure that they made and effectuated an arrest,” Koester asserted.
The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office declined CBS46’s request for an interview, citing “an active internal affairs investigation as a result of the complaint filed by the family,” but they did give us incident reports filed by the deputies involved.
According to the deputies, the teen repeatedly refused to get out of his truck when ordered to do so, and worried he may be able to shift the truck into gear. They report they hit him twice with a baton and once with the taser for five seconds while he was still in the truck from 5 to 7 ft. away. The report does not mention the taser being used anytime once Fruhling was outside of his truck. The 19-year-old was booked into jail charged with DUI-drugs, obstruction and public drunkenness.
Source: http://www.cbs46.com