Six police officers in Atlanta, Georgia have been charged after a video of the officials showed how they forcefully dragged two black students out of their car and shot them with stun guns. The event unfolded while the vehicle was stuck in traffic when protesters blocked the road.
Paul Howard, the Fulton County District Attorney, announced the charges placed on the officers in a news conference. The Atlanta police department did not provide any comments regarding the incident, reported Oxygen.
"I feel a little safer now that these monsters are off of the street and no longer able to terrorize anyone else," said Messiah Young, 22 years old who is one of the two black students that were dragged from their vehicle, the other being his girlfriend, Taniyah Pilgrim, 20 years old.
A repeating event
The footage of the incident first spread throughout social media and local news on Saturday night. The video shows the couple being forced out of their car by the officers while they scream and ask the law enforcement what they did wrong.
Two of the police officers involved in the incident have been fired on Sunday after the mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms along with Erika Shields, the Atlanta Police Department chief, reviewed the body cam footage. The two officials believe that the officers had used excessive force during the incident, as reported by Insider.
Authorities released Pilgrim without any charges but Young, however, was charged with attempting to elude the officers, said Howard, and that Mayor Bottoms was working on getting the police to drop charges against him.
According to CBS News, one of the officers who used his stun gun on the couple, Lonnie Hood is facing two counts of aggravated assault for tasing the students along with one count of simple battery. The other officers involved were also indicted with several charges of assault and damage to property.
Chief Shields said that the officers were good people and that she knew them personally and had worked with one of them for more than 20 years. She added, however, that they made a mistake they would now regret that they cannot remove.
Going forward
In the aftermath of the encounter, Young suffered a fractured arm along with a long laceration when officers forcefully dragged him out of the car. Howard also noted that Young told an investigator that the police officer who escorted him after the incident punched him at the back for more than ten times while they were walking.
The two students are both seniors at colleges found near downtown Atlanta. Young, who hails from Chicago, is a student at Morehouse College and is studying business management, while his girlfriend Pilgrim, studies at Spelman College for psychology.
Howard announced that he has talked with a judge to set a signature bond with an amount of $10,000, which is meant to limit the number of people who will be in the Fulton County jail. He also added that the officers had been asked to turn themselves in willingly by the end of the day.
