Teen Sues Cop For Slamming Her Face To Pavement

Teen Sues Cop For Slamming Her Face To Pavement

One out of control police officer is getting sued after using excessive force on a teenage girl after her high school graduation. Via RawStory:

18-year-old Gabbi Lemos was brutally assaulted by a police officer after celebrating her graduation from high school at her home. Hours after the party, Deputy Marcus Holton and six other officers with the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department arrived uninvited at the home and began aggressively interrogating people who were outside.

Before approaching the house, Holton noticed that Gabbi’s sister Karli was sitting in a parked vehicle outside with her boyfriend and he began to question them. At one point during the interrogation, Holton opened Karli’s door and attempted to physically rip her out of the vehicle. Gabbi witnessed what was occurring outside of her home and shouted at the officer to leave her sister alone, and demanded that a female officer be called to the scene.

“It was scary seeing all his anger toward her in that moment. That’s when I decided to say something,” Gabbi said.

Of course…the officer didn’t like being talked back to.

“I told him what he was doing wasn’t OK, that he couldn’t touch us,” Gabbi later told reporters.

Gabbi’s mother Michelle Lemos then came out and told her to go in the house. Next, according to the lawsuit, Holten “bolted around the family and without a word caught Gabbi from behind the neck in a chokehold, lifting her small body off the ground several feet before throwing her face-first onto the driveway.”

“Deputy Holton put his knee in the back of Gabbi’s head and began grinding her face into the gravel, despite her screams and her family’s pleas to stop,” the lawsuit said.

“All of a sudden, I felt an arm and my neck and that’s when he lifted me up off the ground and threw me face first onto the ground just, like right here,” Gabby said.

After police bodycam footage corroborated Gabby’s story, all charges against her were dropped and the family filed suit. We hope she wins her case.

Twitter / ABC 7