The lawsuit promises that Colorado Springs law enforcement officers pepper sprayed a 17-calendar year-previous lady who was already handcuffed and restrained in the again of a patrol car or truck.
A lawsuit submitted in Colorado’s El Paso County alleges that a Colorado Springs regulation enforcement officer pepper sprayed a 17-year-old woman 2 times while she was handcuffed and restrained in the back again of a law enforcement car.
According to The Gazette, the lawsuit—filed by Killmer, Lane & Newman, LLP, on behalf of the family of Amara Keens-Dumas—claims that Colorado Springs officers approached Keens-Dumas and her boyfriend right after an unnamed third celebration noted that the pair experienced gotten into a verbal altercation.
When officers arrived to investigate the report, Keens-Dumas’s brother instructed them to leave.
Even so, law enforcement returned an estimated 45 minutes later on, when Keens-Dumas remaining the house and commenced crying in the road.
In her lawsuit, Keens-Dumas claims that Colorado Springs officers handcuffed her, then compelled her towards the side of a police motor vehicle.
When Officer Ryan Yoshimiya touched Keens-Dumas’s leg—despite Keens-Dumas asking officers not to physically touch her—it brought on a so-referred to as “trauma response.”

Keens-Dumas’s brother experienced earlier warned officers of this “trauma reaction,” noting that Keens-Dumas was a rape survivor.
“Rather than de-escalate the situation designed by their avoidable groping of Ms. Keens-Dumas, Defendants Ragsdale and Yoshimiya forcefully place her onto the asphalt. Each officers place their pounds on Ms. Keens-Dumas, which triggered painful cuts, scrapes, and bruising on her arms, knees, and legs,” the lawsuit alleges.
The total incident was recorded by the identical bystander who experienced at first called the police.
The bystander, adds The Gazette, explained they ended up “horrified” by the officers’ reaction.
Right after Keens-Dumas was positioned within a patrol automobile, Sgt. Gregory Wilhelmi arrived and requested Officer Yoshimiya if the teenager “[had] been sprayed,” prompting Yoshimiya to explain to Keens-Dumas that she would be pepper sprayed if she did not end screaming.
“When Defendant Wilhelmi sprayed Ms. Keens-Dumas with pepper spray, Defendant Yoshimiya coughed — at the reverse close of the automobile — and shut the still left rear doorway. He thereby locked Ms. Keens-Dumas in the police car, sitting down in a fog of pepper spray, with the doors and windows closed. She was effectively imprisoned in a fuel chamber with no escape from the excruciatingly unpleasant pepper spray,” the criticism states.
Keens-Dumas was then taken to the law enforcement station, exactly where she was afterwards retrieved by her mother.
“Defendants’ uses of force in opposition to Ms. Keens-Dumas, which include the use of pepper spray though she was restrained in the again of the police car or truck, have been grossly extreme,” the lawsuit suggests.
The lawsuit is searching for compensatory damages as properly as a published apology, law enforcement procedural changes, more regulation enforcement coaching to avert future incidents, and comparable therapies.
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Lawsuit alleges Colorado law enforcement pepper sprayed handcuffed 17-12 months-previous girl