HOLYOKE -- In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Hampden Superior Court in Springfield, three Holyoke police officers were accused of beating a 12-year-old boy unconscious after responding to a shots-fired call in 2014.

"Rather than searching and questioning the boy the officers assaulted him without cause, inflicting a concussion, deviated nasal septum, multiple abrasions and contusions to the scalp, face, chin and left ear, contusions to the chest wall and other injuries," the civil suit states.

The incident occurred at night on Feb. 8, 2014, as police responded to a suicidal man and shots fired at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge between Holyoke and South Hadley, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed by Janette Hernandez Pagan, mother of the then-12-year-old boy. They now live in Winter Haven, Florida, and at the time of the incident lived at 15 North Summer St. here, according to the lawsuit.

The Republican's policy is not to identify juveniles in such cases.

Defendants named in the lawsuit are Holyoke police officers Thomas J. Leahy, James Dunn and Jabet Lopez, as well as the city of Holyoke.

The plaintiffs' lawyer, Hector E. Pineiro of Worcester, couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Sara J. Carroll, assistant city solicitor for the city of Holyoke, said, "To my knowledge, the city has not yet been served with this complaint. I am unable to comment."

The court complaint includes 18 photos that allegedly show bruises on the boy.

The boy at the time of the incident stood 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighed about 110 pounds, the lawsuit states. He was outside the apartment building where he lived the night of the incident when "a distraught neighbor, Edgar Zayas ... began to talk irrationally about killing himself and began waiving a .44-caliber handgun."

The photo above, included in a lawsuit filed Tuesday, allegedly shows bruises suffered by a 12-year-old boy at the hands of Holyoke police officers who had responded to a shots-fired call in relation to a suicidal man at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge between Holyoke and South Hadley on Feb. 8, 2014.

The boy and another neighbor tried to reason with Zayas and followed him to the bridge. Zayas fired the gun into the air twice and again at three traveling vehicles and several more times before aiming the gun at his own chin, according to the lawsuit.

Holyoke and South Hadley police responded. Initially, Holyoke officers at gunpoint detained the neighbor who had accompanied the boy, handcuffed and searched him for weapons. But they released him after he said, "The guy you are looking for is on the bridge," according to the lawsuit.

"Police spotted Mr. Zayas, ordered him to drop the gun and when he failed to obey they tackled and disarmed him," the lawsuit states.

At this point, the boy "panicked" and at first tried to hide behind a wall and then ran. But he encountered a Holyoke police officer who pointed a service weapon at the boy, according to the lawsuit. The last name of the officer allegedly involved in this part of the incident as included in the lawsuit is not among the officers named as defendants, suggesting a possible misspelling of an officer's name.

"I don't have a weapon with me, I did not do anything," said the boy, according to the lawsuit. Officers told the boy to put his hands behind his back and kneel.

"At no time did he make any gesture or statement that could reasonably be perceived as threatening to the officers," the lawsuit says. "The officers seized him and though he did not resist began striking him with their feet and/or knees, a baton and/or with a hard blunt object on his back, ribs and head until he passed out."

"The officer scraped (the boy's) face against the road surface causing a number of facial injuries," the lawsuit says.

One of the Holyoke officers claimed that while on the ground the boy was trying to retrieve something from under his body, the lawsuit states.

The boy was taken in police custody to Holyoke Medical Center, sent to a juvenile detention facility in Springfield and charged with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, the lawsuit says.

The boy was released from the juvenile detention facility at 5 p.m. on Feb. 9, 2014. His mother took him to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, where he was diagnosed with a head injury and chest bruises, according to the suit.

"No reasonable officer would have manhandled, tackled, kicked, kneed or (struck the boy) under the circumstances and doing so served no legitimate purpose," the lawsuit states.

The plaintiffs seek money for damages and lawyer and hospital fees.

Zayas was sentenced to three years in the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow followed by five years probation at a court hearing in May 2015 after he said he had ingested PCP at a friend's house before he ended up on the bridge firing a gun.