*A federal jury has awarded a 65-year-old Atlanta man $100 million after an encounter with police four years ago left him paralyzed.
The jury ruled that an unreasonable amount of force was used by officer Jon Grubbs during a 2018 arrest of Jerry Blasingame, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
Blasingame attempted to flee prompting Grubbs to tase him, causing the elderly man to fall and hit his head on the ground. He also suffered a fracture neck after.
The encounter left Blasingame paralyzed from the neck down. According to the report, body camera footage shows him unconscious after being tased.
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Blasingame’s attorney Ven Johnson told the court that his client had been panhandling when police confronted him.
“He was panhandling and the police, of course, rolled up on him, chased him, and then ran after him,” Blasingame’s attorney Ven Johnson told the court.
Blasingame filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in 2019. Last week, a jury determined that the City of Atlanta and Grubbs violated his civil rights.
He was awarded $100 million due to his severe spinal cord injury from being tased in the back.
The jury ordered the city to pay $60 million, plus another $40 million from Grubbs, according to AJC.
“The record would allow the jury to find that Mr. Blasingame had not been committing a serious crime before he was tased/ that Officer Grubbs did not fear for his safety/ and that the exigent circumstances were not otherwise so severe as to permit Officer Grubbs’s use of force,” Judge Steve Jones wrote Friday.
Blasingame requires round-the-clock care and so far has $14 million in medical bills, per AJC.
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