NC mom drove son to hospital for help, then watched him beaten, tased, lawsuit says

In December 2019, Jessica Long feared her 16-year-old son was spiraling into a mental health crisis, drove him to a Lincolnton hospital and asked security officers to help get the defiant youth inside.

Instead, Long says in a new federal lawsuit, her son was tasered, beaten and body slammed by both hospital personnel and Lincoln County Sheriff’s deputies, and left bleeding and handcuffed outside the building where he had been taken to get care.

The officers’ violent response is captured in full on a 45-minute surveillance video taken outside of Atrium Health Lincoln just after midnight on Dec. 8, 2019. At one point, the footage shows the handcuffed teen, identified in the lawsuit as John Doe, sitting on a blood-stained curb when he is punched in the face by one of the deputies who had responded to a 911 call.

In remarks last year to Observer news partner WBTV, both Atrium and Lincoln County Sheriff Bill Beam defended the officers’ actions, saying they acted appropriately given the teen’s threatening behavior.

But Long’s attorney, Brad Smith of Charlotte, told the Observer last week that the video clearly shows that the Gaston County woman and her son came to the hospital “in crisis and in desperate need of medical care.”

“What they received instead from these defendants was a horrific violation of their most basic and fundamental rights,” Smith said in an email, adding that the officers’ violent methods undermine community trust.

“Do we live in a society where people ... should be afraid to come to the hospital or call the law out of fear of being assaulted and arrested?”

Long’s lawsuit names Atrium Health, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority, Atrium security officers Adam Harczuk and Rolando Leal along with Lincoln County, Beam and deputies Justin Polson and Michael Johnson. It lists a broad range of claims — from assault and battery and excessive force, false imprisonment and infliction of emotional distress, to negligence, conspiracy and constitutional violations.

The complaint also says the defendants libeled and slandered the family by making false statements about the confrontation and the teenager to justify their actions, while also sharing the teen’s private medical records with unauthorized individuals.

Spitting blood

In a response filed by Charlotte attorney Sean Perrin, Beam, his deputies and Lincoln County deny most of the family’s allegations and asked a judge to dismiss the case, citing governmental immunity and the teenager’s contributory negligence.

Polson also filed a counter claim in which he accuses the youth of assault by spitting blood in his face.

In an interview with WBTV, Beam said Polson acted appropriately in response to what the sheriff described “a felonious assault.“

“Spitting in a law enforcement officer’s face ... is a felonious assault and he had a right to stop that assault from occurring,” Beam said.

In her filing for Harczuk and Leal, Charlotte attorney Lori Keeton repeated many of the arguments in asking for the lawsuit to be thrown out. She said her clients acted appropriately, had governmental immunity, and that the family’s claims of damages were undermined by their own “willful and wanton conduct.”

Atrium media relations manager Kate Gaier declined comment last week, adding: “Out of respect for the process, we will look forward to sharing more about our position on this in court.”

In a statement released after publication of the TV station’s story in February, Atrium said its security officers took measures to restrain the youth after he became physically and verbally abusive to both his mother and the officers. The hospital said the youth threatened to kill Harczuk, Leal and others.

The teen’s behavior forced the security officers “to make sure they could keep themselves, our patients, and our entire care provider team safe. We take threats and acts of violence very seriously,” Atrium said.

Conflicting versions

The lawsuit and video map the combustible intersection of mental health and public safety, which frequently results in violence.

Nearly a fourth of the people killed by police since 2015 have a known mental illness, according to NPR. Injuries in such encounters are common, though not as well tracked.

According to Long’s complaint, she decided on the night of Dec. 7, 2019, that her son needed hospital care after he began behaving strangely at their Gaston County home. They pulled up to the emergency room in Lincolnton just after midnight.

The video, which has no sound, shows the teen getting out of the backseat of the car and begin arguing with his mother. He pushes her once, bumps her on another occasion. Eventually, a hospital security officer appears. The lawsuit identifies him as Harczuk.

The teen begins gesturing at Harczuk, who towers over him. A little later into the confrontation, the officer throws the youth to the ground and violently shoves him down again after he rises to his feet. According to the lawsuit, Harczuk shot the teen multiple times with his Taser — a claim the officer denies. Throughout the struggle, the lawsuit alleges, Long continued to plead for her son to receive care.

Eventually, the teen and his mother walk back toward their car, which also holds Long’s 7-year-old son. There, as the mother turns away, John Doe is clothes-lined by Leal and falls face first on the pavement, the video shows. Leal then pounces on the teen, struggling to handcuff him and, according to the lawsuit. The pavement beneath them eventually appears bloodied.

The security officers’ court filings offer a different version of events.

Harczuk, according to Keeton’s response, answered a call for a disturbance outside the Emergency Room and found the teenager “assaulting his mother, cussing at her and threatening her.”

“Plaintiff Doe ignored his numerous commands to keep his hands off his mother and so Officer Harczuk grabbed Plaintiff Doe by the shirt and pulled him away from Plaintiff Long to protect her from being further assaulted and Plaintiff Doe fell to the ground,” the filing states.

The officer, according to the filing, says he pulled his Taser but did not use it after the teen punched him in the head and continued to threaten Long and him.

Likewise, Leal said he later knocked the teen to the ground to keep him from entering the family’s car, according to Keeton’s filing, but says he never assaulted or beat the youth.

In their filings, Leal says he asked Harczuk to use his Taser on the teen as the officers struggled to restrain him. Harczuk did, documents show.

Three Lincoln County deputies appear. At one point, Polson crouches in front of the handcuffed teen as the youth sits among the officers on the curb in front of the hospital. In the video, Polson appears to be talking to the youth when he winces, then throws two point-blank punches at the youth’s face. Court documents say the officer was reacting to the boy spitting blood in his face.

Polson is pulled away from the teen by another deputy as Johnson piles on the boy to restrain him. Long, according to the lawsuit, asked the officers to stop. Polson then charged the mother “like a raging bull,” according to the lawsuit, before he is tackled by another officer.

Some 40 minutes after he arrives with his mother, the teen is finally led into the emergency room. The lawsuit said he suffered serious injuries and deals with “persistent psychiatric trauma” from the confrontation.

In the weeks following, according to the complaint, “nearly all the defendants ... engaged in a civil conspiracy to publicly publish false and defamatory statements (about the youth) ... to defame his character and justify the violent and malicious conduct ...”

Statements by the hospital security officers that the teen had punched them and threatened to come back with a gun and shoot them are false, according to the lawsuit.

“This is a family that was within footsteps of the hospital when all this happened,” Smith, the attorney, said. “They went there looking to get help, and this is the result.”