Barbara Pinkney of Bradenton, Fla., has been left distraught and traumatized after a horrific encounter with Manatee County sheriff’s deputies.
CBS News and WFLA report that on Dec. 26, deputies came to the 70-year-old’s home to serve an arrest warrant to her grandson, Tevin Turner, on a probation violation for carrying a concealed weapon.
“We heard a knock at the door. Actually, there wasn’t a knock. I think they kicked the door. Bam! Bam! At the door,” Pinkney told WFLA. “When he was on probation he gave this as his address, but he wasn’t living here.”
Pinkney refused the deputies’ entry on the basis that they didn’t have a search warrant, but the deputies insisted it wasn’t required since they were executing an arrest warrant.
That’s when things went left, as CBS News reports:
The report said deputies told Pinkney she could be arrested for obstructing justice if she kept refusing to cooperate with them. At that point, she tried to shut the door on them, according to deputies.
The arrest report said when one deputy tried to arrest Pinkney she pulled away and pushed him in the chest.
The deputy pulled out his taser and pulled the trigger, but it didn’t have any effect, according to the report. So, the deputy tased her again and it sent her to the ground.
But she kept resisting, the report said, so she was tased a third time.
Yes, a 70-year-old woman who poses absolutely no physical threat was tased three times.
“I was just hollering. I was scared,” she said. “I didn’t know what else to do. I was just hollering.”
According to the probable cause affidavit, Pinkney was left with notable injuries after being tased in her “left arm,” “back,” and “upper back.” The deputy also used his knee to hold her against the ground before she was eventually arrested for felony battery on a law enforcement officer and obstructing justice. And to add insult to injury, this entire ordeal went down on her birthday.
“It’s not something that you see every day or something you expect to happen. Even if she wasn’t my grandmother. Dang, this is a 70-year-old woman,” said Elizabeth Francisco, Pinkney’s granddaughter-in-law, who video recorded the arrest.
On Jan. 17, Pinkney will have her day in court and thankfully, her community is prepared to fight right alongside her. Activist group Answer Suncoast will host a march on New Year’s Eve and it’s safe to assume other community efforts will be announced in the coming weeks.
But in the interim, as Pinkney struggles to make sense of what transpired, it’s evident that the trauma from that encounter has bled into her everyday life.
“Whenever I see police, I just try to not look at them,” she said in tears.