A female bartender battered beyond recognition by Bay area police on Saint Patty’s Day is now suing the officers who brutalized her.
In the vicious assault, the pretty California woman sustained severe facial injuries, including broken bones and missing teeth -- a bit of a problem, considering she’s also a fashion model.
Megan Sheehan admits her initial arrest occurred on the heels of some serious drinking last March, and she may have mouthed off as well. But, still, the force used against her once she was at the Santa Rita jailhouse for booking was so excessive it landed her in the hospital.
“I don't believe they should have broken four bones in my face and knocked out some of my teeth," Sheehan says.
ABC News has obtained the jail’s surveillance video which shows that most of the harm done to the battered bartender occurred during a rapid, unexplained “take down” by two patrolmen restraining her by the arms.
The footage clearly shows the pair violently throwing Sheehan face-first to the floor, and that, without her hands free, she couldn’t protect herself from the consequences of a potentially-deadly tumble.
When emergency responders arrived, they found the young woman unconscious in a pool of her own blood.
"They knew by throwing her to the ground without having her hands available to break the fall that she was going to suffer serious head injuries,” asserts the lawyer now representing Megan Sheehan in a lawsuit she’s filed to recover damages from the excessive force incident.
Attorney John Scott has no doubt whatsoever the offending officers’ actions were intentional and that they resorted to such grievous measures because they felt his client “had to be taught a lesson.”
“In police jargon, she flunked the attitude test," says Scott, who emphasizes that it took his badly beaten client a long time to recuperate from the unwarranted attack, and that, understandably, she’s still emotionally traumatized by it.
Spokespeople for the police officers named in Sheehan’s suit are citing the pending litigation as the reason they won’t comment.
