A village police force has been shut down following an incident involving one of its officers and a 9-year-old boy from Ohio. The officer used a stun gun on the boy and shocked him twice while the boy was lying on the floor with his hands secured under his body. The incident occurred in Mount Sterling. A truancy complaint was filed by the sheriff’s office, leading to the incident. The officer warned the boy before shocking him at his home.
The mother was begged by the boy to let him go to school instead of with the officer. The mother told the boy that it was too late at that point. The officer described the boy as 5-foot-5 and close to 200 pounds. The boy was pulled from the couch but dropped to the floor and became ‘dead weight’ while flailing and kicking. The officer then says that he fired a warning shock with the stun gun while the boy’s mother told the boy to listen to the officer so he would not wind up being shocked.
The attorney for the mother of the boy, Tracy Comisford, said that the mother was not expecting the officer to actually use the stun gun when he arrived at the house to arrest her son.
“She certainly never wanted this to happen,” Comisford said.
The report from the police officer says that the boy was shocked twice because he did not comply after the first shocking. It also states that the boy screamed during each shock and stopped moving. The shocks each lasted a period of five seconds. The boy was evaluated by medical personnel and his mother signed a waiver for medical treatment. The boy was then transported to the Madison County Sheriff’s Office. The incident is being investigated by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
The chief of the department, Mike McCoy, resigned from his post on Monday. He said that the village does not have enough finances to support the department any longer. McCoy was suspended last Thursday because he did not report the incident to the mayor. The police force of part-time police officers was also disbanded and the village is now being patrolled by the sheriff’s department. McCoy has said that he did the right thing by not telling the mayor about the incident immediately because he wanted to investigate it further on his own.
“I did what I was supposed to do to maintain the integrity of the incident,” McCoy said.
