Witnesses said that the boy did not seen out of control. Doug Messersmith said that “He looked a little agitated but, other than that, he didn’t look to be falling down drunk or anything like that.”
He was lying on the shoulder when the police arrived. There were no drugs or alcohol in his system and the family believes that he fell from the overpass.
The extensive use of the tasers forced doctors to delay the operation on the teenager for two days.
Ozark Police Capt. Thomas Rousset says that they hit him with the tasers up to 19 times “to keep him from getting hurt” by running into traffic. He added that “He refused to comply with the officers and so the officers had to deploy their Tasers in order to subdue him. He is making incoherent statements; he’s also making statements such as, ‘Shoot cops, kill cops,’ things like that. So there was cause for concern to the officers.”
We still have a boy who just fell from an overpass with a broken back and no apparent weapon.
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