Taniyah Pilgrim & Messiah Young Speak On Being Brutally Assaulted By APD

Source: Fox 5 / Fox 5 Handout

In the wake of the firing of the two Atlanta police officers who violently arrested them, two college students are speaking out. As previously reported Messiah Young, a Morehouse College student, and Taniyah Pilgrim, a Spelman College student, were seen on video being manhandled by authorities after 9 p.m. Saturday night.

The couple was driving when police SLASHED THEIR TIRES, broke the windows of their car, dragged them out, and tased them.

Taniyah and Messiah spoke out during a press conference and said that they feared for their lives as cops told them they were going to kill them.

“This is the most traumatic thing that has ever happened and has ever happened again in my life, I’m very shaken up I don’t even know how to act what to do,” said Pilgrim. “I just can’t stop thinking about if cameras weren’t there or if they went a little bit further.”

“He said he was going to shoot us,” Pilgrim recounted one of the officers told her, admitting she is still trying to process what happened. “We felt like we were going to die in our car.”

The students’ attorney L. Chris Stewart told FOX 5 that he’s outraged.

“Officers threw Pilgrim to the ground, she landed face down in the pavement and they handcuffed her,” wrote in a statement sent to FOX 5 News adding both had Tasers used on them. Stewart was retained by Pilgrim on Monday.

“These are children who were treated as if they had just robbed a bank or shot up a church,” said Stewart.

Taniyah and Messiah spoke about their harrowing experience on Good Morning America.

According to Messiah, he and Taniyah were stuck in bumper to bumper traffic when he saw a friend on the sidewalk being tackled by police. Messiah said officers then went from manhandling his friend to ripping him and Taniyah out of their car, calling it “utter chaos.”

Taniyah echoed the sentiment.

“I actually both me and Messiah were gonna die, the way everything happened so fast,” said the Spelman student. “There was no telling what could happen in the next moment. When they [the police] tackled him [the friend] we were there, we saw what happened. we saw everything.”