While California Highway Patrol officials announced plans to investigate a roadside beating of an unidentified woman on a Los Angeles freeway that was captured in a video that went viral, the victim’s family is demanding answers, the Daily Mail reports.
Highway Patrol Assist. Chief Chris O'Quinn said at a news conference late Saturday afternoon that the woman posed a threat to herself and people in traffic, and the officer was forced to restrain her. She was walking eastbound on Interstate 10, just west of downtown Los Angeles Tuesday, the report says.
He further explained that the woman had begun walking off the freeway but returned when the confrontation occurred, the report says. The officer involved in the incident has not been identified and has been put on paid administrative leave while the investigation is carried out, the Mail reports.
Meanwhile, the woman’s family has hired Los Angeles attorney Caree Harper to help find answers in the case, which sparked outrage after a video of the brutal beating went viral. The lawyer declined to disclose the woman's name or explain why she was walking barefoot alongside the freeway, the report says.
“We want the focus to be what he was doing to her, not what she was doing prior to the confrontation,” Harper said. “She was getting beat like an animal. No one should ever be beat like that.”
The man who recorded the video, David Diaz, told ABC7 that the officer struck the woman at least 11 times in the head during the incident, which he recorded on his cellphone camera from his car.
“The most animalistic, most brutal way to subdue someone is to pound someone's head into the concrete with really big blows to the head,” Diaz told ABC7. “There was no weapons—it's obviously excess force. He starts really letting loose… He starts pounding down on her face really hard. He doesn't try to grab her hands first.”
The daughter of the unidentified woman said the family wants answers.
“He punched and pound and pound on her, the only thing she could do was block her face,” the daughter, Mayisha Adams, said Saturday, according to the Mail.
Read more at the Daily Mail.