{"id":13819,"date":"2016-10-21T06:16:53","date_gmt":"2016-10-21T06:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=13819"},"modified":"2016-10-21T06:16:53","modified_gmt":"2016-10-21T06:16:53","slug":"florida-man-who-was-paralyzed-after-getting-shot-by-cops-arrested-for-selling-drugs-near-preschool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/florida-man-who-was-paralyzed-after-getting-shot-by-cops-arrested-for-selling-drugs-near-preschool.html","title":{"rendered":"Florida man who was paralyzed after getting shot by cops arrested for selling drugs near preschool"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 18pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\">Florida man who was paralyzed after getting shot by cops arrested for selling drugs near preschool<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>Florida man who was paralyzed after getting shot by cops arrested for selling drugs near preschool:-<\/strong> A Florida man who won a $23 million lawsuit after he was shot and subsequently paralyzed by a sheriff&#8217;s deputy has been arrested for allegedly selling heroin, <\/span>marijuana<span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\"> and cocaine near a preschool \u2014 but the man&#8217;s lawyer claims cops have &#8220;entrapped&#8221; his client by refusing to pay any part of the millions of dollars they owe him.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The Palm Beach Sheriff&#8217;s Office announced the arrest of 23-year-old Dontrell Stephens in a scathing Facebook <\/span>post Thursday<span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">&#8220;If you sell drugs near a DAY CARE CENTER you are going to get #BUSTED,&#8221; the department captioned the post, which included Stephens&#8217; mugshot alongside a screengrab of his booking sheet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">This was the department&#8217;s first Facebook post announcing an arrest since Sept. <\/span>30,<span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\"> 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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Stephens was unarmed when he was shot four times by Deputy Adams Lin in September 2013. Lin, who&#8217;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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">After the shooting, Stephens sued the department and was awarded the large dollar figure this February.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">&#8220;Just as surely as if they had planted drugs on Dontrell Stephens, he has been entrapped,&#8221; Scarola said. &#8220;There is no excuse for engaging in illegal drug trade, but any reasonable look at Dontrell&#8217;s desperate circumstances would show why he may have been led to do <\/span>thing<span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\"> he otherwise would have never done.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Scarola said Stephens has been surviving off of Social Security disability checks and the &#8220;generosity and pity of friends.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The lawyer said the department&#8217;s refusal to pay Stephens has brought him to the &#8220;brink of desperation&#8221; and implied that bad blood between his client and the sheriff&#8217;s office could have triggered the arrest.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">&#8220;The moment he falls off the ledge, if <\/span>in fact<span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\"> he has fallen off the ledge, the Palm Beach Sheriff&#8217;s Office is there to catch him,&#8221; Scarola said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 8pt;\">Source:-\u00a0http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/news\/national\/florida-man-shot-police-arrested-selling-drugs-school-article-1.2839112<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/florida-man-who-was-paralyzed-after-getting-shot-by-cops-arrested-for-selling-drugs-near-preschool.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[8492],"class_list":["post-13819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-florida-man-who-was-paralyzed-after-getting-shot-by-cops-arrested-for-selling-drugs-near-preschool"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}