Cops Appear To Pepper Spray A Handcuffed 15-Year-Old Girl After She Gets Hit By A Car

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Via Shutterstock / Robin Ficker Law Offices

Some truly disturbing footage has emerged of police roughing up a teenage girl in Hagerstown, Maryland after she was struck by a car while riding her bike. The biracial girl, aged fifteen, was charged with several offenses — including two counts of second-degree assault, disorderly conduct, and possession of marijuana — after an enormous ordeal, according to her attorney, Robin Ficker. Many of the alleged actions of the officers occurred in this Facebook video, and body cam footage is reportedly on the way, which Ficker says will reveal the rest.

After the teenager was struck by a vehicle, she lost consciousness for about 30 seconds and then reportedly tried to ride away on her bike. Bystanders summoned police, but the girl refused medical attention. So, a cop allegedly slammed her face into a wall. They cuffed her, placed her in the back of a patrol vehicle, and warned her that she would be sprayed if she didn’t put her legs in the car. She asked for an officer friend of hers to be contacted, but the officer sprayed her instead. In the video, she’s heard screaming and crying and begging for relief (“I can’t breathe”), which she did not receive.

At one point, a bystander questions the officers’ actions and receives this answer: “What happens … [she could have] a brain injury or something like that, and then she could die later? And she’s going to come over here and fight us when all we want to do is make sure she’s okay.”

In a Facebook comment on her attorney’s video post, Ficker reveals that police not only sprayed the girl through the open door, but they also sprayed her from the inside of the car “in the mouth through the partition between the front and back seats. They do not seatbelt her and never take her to the hospital for treatment.” Hours after she was taken to the police station to be charged, police allowed the girl to leave with her father, who took her to the hospital.

The girl’s charges will be handled by juvenile court.

(Via ABC News & Robin Ficker Law Offices)

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