Florida man who was paralyzed after getting shot by cops arrested for selling drugs near preschool
Florida man who was paralyzed after getting shot by cops arrested for selling drugs near preschool:- A Florida man who won a $23 million lawsuit after he was shot and subsequently paralyzed by a sheriff’s deputy has been arrested for allegedly selling heroin, marijuana and cocaine near a preschool — but the man’s lawyer claims cops have “entrapped” his client by refusing to pay any part of the millions of dollars they owe him.
The Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office announced the arrest of 23-year-old Dontrell Stephens in a scathing Facebook post Thursday.
“If you sell drugs near a DAY CARE CENTER you are going to get #BUSTED,” the department captioned the post, which included Stephens’ mugshot alongside a screengrab of his booking sheet.
This was the department’s first Facebook post announcing an arrest since Sept. 30, when it shared news about an arrest in a 1975 murder case. The department did not immediately return a request for comment from the Daily News about why it chose to announce the arrest online.
Stephens was unarmed when he was shot four times by Deputy Adams Lin in September 2013. Lin, who’s Asian-American, testified that he opened fire because he thought he saw Stephens reach for something from his waistband after pulling him over for riding his bicycle into traffic. Lin was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing and remains on the force.
After the shooting, Stephens sued the department and was awarded the large dollar figure this February.
But his lawyer, Jack Scarola, said Stephens has been suffering financially as the department has refused to pay out any part of the money it owes him.
“Just as surely as if they had planted drugs on Dontrell Stephens, he has been entrapped,” Scarola said. “There is no excuse for engaging in illegal drug trade, but any reasonable look at Dontrell’s desperate circumstances would show why he may have been led to do thing he otherwise would have never done.”
Scarola said Stephens has been surviving off of Social Security disability checks and the “generosity and pity of friends.”
The lawyer said the department’s refusal to pay Stephens has brought him to the “brink of desperation” and implied that bad blood between his client and the sheriff’s office could have triggered the arrest.
“The moment he falls off the ledge, if in fact he has fallen off the ledge, the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office is there to catch him,” Scarola said.
Source:-Â http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/florida-man-shot-police-arrested-selling-drugs-school-article-1.2839112
