KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – The 22-year-old autistic son of a woman who was killed making an ATM withdrawal outside Knoxville TVA Employees in December 2010 filed suit against police who roughed him up and handcuffed him in the confusion following his mother’s shooting.
Guardians for Richard Vowell, who was a passenger in the pick-up truck when an assailant fatally shot his mother, say the mentally challenged man suffered various injuries including a broken nose, broken teeth and a knee injury that required subsequent hospitalization after police mistakenly assaulted and handcuffed him during a struggle following the shooting.
The assailant, Brandon Anderson, 21, has been charged with murder in the shooting of Vowell’s mother Davida Nicholson, 46. Authorities say Johnson, who was brandishing two guns, shot Nicholson as she tried to drive away, subsequently crashing the truck into the side of the credit union branch.
Johnson also allegedly fired at other members in the credit union parking lot before dragging Vowell from his mother’s truck and climbing inside. Police say he was in the process of robbing the mortally wounded Nicholson when they arrived.
Arriving officers grabbed Vowell, who “was pacing back and forth, mumbling incoherently,” knocked him to the ground, beat him and cuffed him, even though Vowell is white and the assailant, according to the 911 call to police, is black, according to the suit.
After Johnson, still in the victim’s truck, pointed his two guns at arriving officers he was shot once in the neck and arrested.
Knoxville Police acknowledged after the shooting that Vowell was wrestled to the pavement and handcuffed in the chaos. Vowell was not responding to police commands, and the officers did not immediately know who he was.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, accuses the officers of civil rights violations, assault and false imprisonment and blames Knoxville Police for failing to properly train its officers in dealing with the mentally challenged. The suit seeks $500,000 in compensatory damages and another $500,000 in punitive damages. The police treatment of the young man, said the suit, was “outrageous and utterly intolerable in a civilized society.”
Johnson was scheduled to stand trial in the fatal shooting in November. The trial has been postponed as Johnson undergoes a psychiatric evaluation.
The suit was filed by Vowell’s sister and his maternal grandmother on his behalf.
