Post by Jack M on Dec 11, 2005 13:54:56 GMT -5
Policeman tasers granny as she sits in police waiting room
Dec. 7, 2005 - FRANKLIN, Ohio -- A local grandmother says she's still afraid to set foot in her hometown, more than a year after being repeatedly shocked with a Taser gun at a police station.
Beverly Kidwell said she went to the Franklin Police Department in April 2004 to talk to an officer about a domestic fight she'd had with her granddaughter.
After a long wait, Lt. Wayne Bowling came into the lobby. A surveillance tape of the lobby shows what happened next. Kidwell said that Bowling pulled out a Taser unit and shocked her.
"I don't know if he thought I was going to get up and leave or what, but he pulled his gun. I thought it was a gun. I'd never seen a Taser gun in my life and I thought, 'Oh my God. He's going to shoot me. He's going to kill me," Kidwell said.
"He pulled the trigger and I felt this excruciating pain and I was immobilized," she said. "You can't think or move, and I fell to the floor and I crumbled up in the fetal position."
Then, the 68-year-old great-grandmother says Lt Bowling ordered her to roll over and stand up. She said, "I thought he is going to kill me, and then the next thing, he shot me again. And he kept saying all the time, get up get up, and I couldn't. It paralyzes your body."
Kidwell said Bowling shocked her five times. "I kept screaming, 'Oh God, please help me. Oh God, please help me,'" she said.
Kidwell was charged with with domestic violence for the fight with her granddaughter and resisting arrest for the incident at the police department.
She has filed a federal lawsuit for a civil rights violation against the city of Franklin, the Franklin police department and Bowling, asking for unspecified damages.
Her attorney, Rick Schulte, said, "Even if he thought Beverly Kidwell had killed someone, there are other means for him to protect himself and society to restrain her. This simply should not have taken place."
The Franklin Police Department won't say why the lieutenant used his taser. The city and police had no comment Tuesday.
