Sandra Amezquita, a six-month pregnant woman from Sunset Park, Brooklyn, was thrown to the ground stomach first by a New York City police officer after she attempted to intervene when the NYPD was arresting her 17-year-old son. Amezquita was bruised and suffered vaginal bleeding following the camera-recorded incident.
Dennis Flores, a member of El Grito de Sunset Park, explained the situation to CBS, saying:
“According to this young man, when they put the razor blade in his pocket, they told him, ‘We’re going to make sure this time, it sticks.’ So the mom saw this, started yelling out, and the cops grabbed her and slammed her against the floor like we see in the video. And they put a Taser to her stomach.”
In the video, you see Amezquita pulling away from an officer who then grabs her, pushes her to the ground stomach first and straddles her to keep her still, never turning her over to take the weight off the baby.
“The first thing I thought was they killed my baby and they’re going to kill my wife,” Amezquita’s husband Ronel Lemos told The New York Daily News.
“I was afraid something happened to my baby. I am still afraid that something is wrong,” said Amezquitas, also adding that she is still in pain from the tackle.
The couple’s son Jhohan was also brutalized by police. Photographs show him with a swollen black eye and bleeding scrapes on his forehead and cheek.
The video is the second recorded incident of police brutality out of Sunset Park in less than a week. Another video shows a police officer unnecessarily kicking a man who had already been restrained.
Image via El Grito de Sunset Park/Facebook
