2015/06/14

UPDATE (7:03 PM PST)

— we previously reported that the child was 13. We have learned since then that he is only 12. His name is Joshua. We have also been told by witnesses that the officer punched Joshua in the face before they started filming.

UPDATE (9:15 AM PST)

— We’re continuing to search for details about this cop’s identity and the child’s whereabouts. Keep checking back here for updates periodically.

FALLBROOK, CA — We have just received a deeply unsettling video of a police officer choking and shooting a child with a taser gun yesterday afternoon, Saturday June 13.

More details are coming out, and we do not have the victim’s name yet, nor the officer’s name, but we do know this happened in Fallbrook, California. A witness at the scene provided us the following information.

The child was 12-yrs-old (on the video other witnesses assume he’s “15 or 16” but our sources say he is in fact 12). He was riding on his skateboard with other young boys behind a shopping center, and there happened to be a patrol car parked nearby.

At some point an officer inside of the patrol car told the 12-yr-old child to “get in the car.”

The child replied, “Why?”

The officer then warned, “You don’t want to get dropped.”

Witnesses say that at this point the child became scared and continued skating to a safe place away from the officer. That is when the officer got out of his vehicle and began slugging the child on the back, according to witnesses.

The cop then “dropped” the child to the ground. At this point several witnesses pulled out their phones and began recording.

The cop can be seen in the video tackling and wrestling the child to the concrete.

But then the unthinkable happens. The video shows the cop locking the child in what appears to be a rear chokehold.

As the child is being choked from behind, the officer uses his free hand to bring his taser gun up to the child’s back and shoot it into his spinal area. The child can be heard screaming, flipping around, and his legs can be seen firing up and down in pain.

The officer then shouts, “Put your fucking hands behind your back!”

The child can be heard saying “I can’t” while screaming.

The next tasering is even more horrendous. The cop literally has the child pinned down to the concrete, and begins tasing his back again. The child’s body can be seen convulsing uncontrollably, his legs flinging up into the air backwards, suggesting serious cardiac problems at this point or possibly seizures.

The other witnesses are heard getting angry and pleading with the cop to stop the attack, saying “He’s just a kid!”

The cop drags the child up and forces him into the patrol car — the child looks visibly injured or motionless. During the final moments of the scene, the officer still has his taser gun out and begins approaching the witnesses. The witnesses are heard asking a nearby citizen for help.

“It was scary,” one of them told FilmingCops.com.

“We thought he was gonna start tasing us too.”

The video then cuts out. The witness said that after the video ended, the cop went around to everybody and demanded their phones to delete the footage.

Fortunately, he was not able to delete all of it. One phone made it out with the footage, which is what you see below.

Other officers showed up, but according to witnesses, those officers did not know what had just occurred. The officer who did the tasing told them that his “arm was injured” as if he was the victim in all of this. He requested to be hauled away in an ambulance, apparently.

Warning: this video is graphic.