An 18-year-old male was shot in the arm on Monday by a cop who mistook his gun for his taser.
Police responded to a call about a son striking his mother across the face at around 2pm in Milledgeville, Georgia.
When they arrived to take the son, Jamel Jackson, 18, into custody he resisted and ‘a brief physical struggle ensued,’ according to a statement released by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to the Macon Telegraph.
Bodycam footage shows the deputies telling Jackson: ‘Put your hands up.’
He struggles to get away from them so one of the deputies yells: ‘Taser! Taser!’
A deputy can then be seen pulling his gun from its holster and firing a shot at the teen.
Jackson gets up and can be heard saying: ‘You messed up my shirt didn’t you?’ before the deputies sit him down and call for medical help.
The GBI statement said the deputies decided to taser Jackson to ‘gain compliance,’ but Deputy Charles Gillis ‘mistakenly drew his firearm instead of his Taser, firing one shot into Jackson’s arm.’
Gillis, a nine-year veteran of the sheriff’s office, is on administrative leave pending further investigation.
The mother Gloria Jackson told police that she and Jamel got into an argument about him cooking food and not cleaning up his room.
‘She confronted him about his actions, he became aggressive toward her,’ the incident report says. ‘He followed her around the house, hitting her, and knocked her down, holding her down on the floor, and not letting her get up. She stated that she hit him and he finally let her up.’
A deputy said he noticed a bruise to the left of Gloria Jackson’s eye, which at started swelling at the time and was sore to the touch, according to the victim.
The son was treated at a Macon hospital, before being jailed Tuesday. He has been charged with misdemeanor family violence and misdemeanor obstruction.
Baldwin Sheriff Bill Massee on Tuesday told the Telegraph: ‘To be honest, it’s a bad situation. … The offender was resisting arrest. … [The deputy] pulled the wrong tool out.
‘We view it as a very serious incident. … Everyone was glad it was not a worse situation than it was,’ he said.
The sheriff said Gillis told investigators he made a mistake and said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Massee met with the public during a Monday night NAACP meeting to respond to questions about the incident.
According to the Union Recorder, one person asked him what constituted the necessity to use excessive force.
‘Well, you try not to use any more excessive force than you have to utilize when you affect an arrest,’ Massee said.
‘Sometimes we have to fight, and sometimes we have to chase people. In this circumstance, the individual was not compliant. So, a decision was made to utilize to use a Taser.’