A 14-year-old Bronx, N.Y., boy underwent emergency surgery to remove shards of glass from his chest, lungs and heart after his mother says police handcuffed her son and then slammed his head through a plate-glass window for mouthing off.
In a New York Daily News exclusive, Cherita Payne says her son Javier has no prior arrest record but was badly injured after police said he assaulted a 39-year-old man whom he had asked for a cigarette.
"He thought he was going to die," Payne told the Daily News regarding her son. "He said he felt the blood rushing out of him. He had never felt anything like that before."
A police source told the Daily News that Javier, who has been charged with obstructing government administration and resisting arrest, was injured after he tried to pull away from the police officer who had handcuffed him.
But Javier's mother claims that when Javier continued talking after police told him not to, he was flung into a hookah bar's window.
"He said, 'I can talk if I want to,' and the cop threw him through the window," she told the Daily News.
"He only weighs 89 pounds," Payne continued, according to the Daily News. "I don’t think they should have used force like that."
Payne also is concerned about the wrist and leg shackles that have been placed on the eighth-grader while he is in the hospital. The police officer that stands guard over the teen while he is in the intensive care unit told her that it was "police protocol," the Daily News reports.
The NYPD declined to comment, but the Daily News notes that the Internal Affairs Bureau questioned Javier, "recorded his statement and showed him an array of photos of cops for identification."
Sanford Rubenstein, the family's lawyer, is asking for a "criminal investigation into the conduct of the cops."
"There is no excuse whatsoever for a police officer to smash a 14-year-old boy's head through a plate-glass window," Rubenstein told the Daily News.
Read more at the New York Daily News.