A former member of the Atlanta Police Department was sentenced to five years in prison after he broke a man’s leg in two places because he believed the man stole a tomato from Walmart.
And here’s the kicker: the man did not even steal the tomato that caused him to lay in a pool of blood because his leg was shattered by the officer’s nightstick.
Channel 2 Action News reports that Trevor King, 49, of Stockbridge, Georgia, was convicted in December on federal charges of unreasonable force and then falsifying a police report after the cop discovered the man did not take anything.
The prosecutors told the court that King was in uniform and working off-duty at the Walmart on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive when he saw Tyrone Carnegay weigh a tomato and walk toward the store’s exit.
Without provocation nor resistance from the victim, King stopped the victim near the door and hit the victim with his baton seven times, breaking two bones in the victim’s right leg.
It was only after Carnegay lay on the floor bleeding from his injuries and in excruciating pain, prosecutors said, that King found a receipt for the tomato in Carnegay’s bag.
Carnegay paid for the tomato just minutes prior to having his leg bashed by King’s baton.
Despite finding the receipt on Carnegay, the injured man was taken to the Fulton County Jail on King’s bogus charges, right after emergency surgery at Grady Memorial Hospital in 2014.
Eventually, prosecutors dropped the charges against Carnegay.
“King then wrote a false report to cover up his unjustified assault,” prosecutors told the court, according to Channel 2 in Atlanta. “Additionally, King charged the victim with obstructing a shoplifting investigation and with assaulting a police officer.”
King retired in January 2017, after being indicted the previous month.
King’s attorney Odis Williams called the conviction and sentencing “heartbreaking for Mr. King, for his family. He’s a father,” according to Channel 2 Action News.
“He got what he deserved,” Carnegay said Monday after the sentencing. “He did me wrong.”
