Brianna Grier was arrested last July in Hancock County, Georgia after suffering a mental health episode. However, the police forgot to lock the back door of her patrol car and Ella Grier fell and sustained injuries that ultimately led to her death six days later.
This week, Grier’s family filed a $100 million lawsuit against the officers who arrested Grier, alleging that their actions constituted excessive force that violated their constitutional rights.
According to the lawsuit, Grier, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, was visiting her parents and twin 3-year-old daughters when she called 911 and said she was having an anxiety attack and needed to take her medication. Two officers, Lt. Marlin Primus and Deputy Timothy Legette, arrived shortly and arrested Grier. According to the complaint, Primus “claimed that he could smell alcohol on Brianna Grier, stating that he was accusing Grier of ‘public drunkenness,'” although Legette “later admitted to Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) officials that he did not smell to alcohol” in his.
According to the complaint, Grier herself insisted she was not drunk, and when Grier’s bodily fluids were later tested, no alcohol was found in her system.
The complaint states that Primus and Legette handcuffed Grier, who, in body camera images of the incident, she can be heard threatening to harm herself if she is arrested. The couple then forced Grier into the back of Legette’s patrol car, where she may have hit her head. According to the complaint, Primus “failed to protect Grier’s head as he lifted and pushed Grier into the vehicle” and “Grier can be heard exclaiming audibly until her head crossed the threshold of the driver’s side rear door frame of the car. patrol of Deputy Legettes. Once Grier’s head crosses the roof of the car door frame, Grier suddenly falls silent.”
A few minutes later, the two officers drove off, leaving the rear passenger-side door of the patrol car open. A few minutes later, Grier, who was not buckled up in the car, fell out of the police car.
In body camera footage of the incident, the two officers can be seen approaching an unconscious Grier, lying face down on the side of the road. “Sit, sit, sit,” Primus says, moving Grier to a sitting position and adding “she jumped in the car.” While the couple’s statements are sometimes hard to hear on released body cam footage, the complaint states Legette added: “We’re going to need an ambulance.”
However, neither officer attempted to administer first aid. As the pair waited for an ambulance, Primus said that Grier “just jumped out. He may not have closed that door. I don’t know that. I don’t know that”, after which he motioned for Legette to turn off the power. his body camera.
Grier was eventually airlifted to an Atlanta hospital. The complaint states that Grier had “multiple skull fractures upon arrival at the hospital” and she was “declared brain dead”, succumbing to her injuries six days later. Last November, the Hancock County District Attorney Announced that he would not seek criminal charges against the officers.
“A state actor cannot arrest and handcuff an individual, place him in a dangerous circumstance, and then not claim fault if the person is harmed precisely because of the danger created by the state actors,” the complaint says. “As a proximate result of insensitive or reckless acts and omissions described above, Grier was injured, endured physical pain and mental suffering, and was killed.”
Grier’s case shows how easily 911 calls seeking medical attention for a person with mental illness can end in tragedy. Police’s aggressive arrest of Grier and their negligence in failing to buckle her into the car and secure the door of the patrol car, according to the complaint, directly caused her needless death.
But Brianna Grier didn’t need to be arrested, she needed an ambulance, something she parents say she had been summoned during her daughter’s previous mental health episode, but instead, she got two police officers.
