(WSAZ) A Facebook video appears to show a Portsmouth, Ohio police officer with his hand on or around a medic’s neck and throat at the scene of a call.
The video has been shared hundreds of times and sparked outrage online, but both police and witnesses say the video doesn’t tell the whole story.
Witnesses say a man had been in a fight and was knocked unconscious.
Police and EMS responded, and when the man who’d been injured came to, he wasn’t calm, Trevor Conley says.
“He just woke up from being knocked out, and he’s got guys all around him grabbing a hold of him,” Conley says. “You’re going to freak out.”
They say they watched a police officer use a Taser on the man, and a medic tried to intervene on the man’s behalf.
“The EMT said, ‘You can’t be tasing this guy, he’s bleeding, got head problems,’ ” Josh Journey said. “Then after that he grabbed the EMT, took him across the street, and I saw him have his hand on his throat all the way across the road and had him up against that cruiser.”
“When the EMT was telling him ‘you can’t do that, you can’t do that, he’s got head trauma,’ he grabbed him up here,” Chad Bennett said, motioning around his neck.
Journey says that’s when he started recording with his phone.
“He saw us with our phones out,” Journey said. “That’s when he came across the street at us and was pretty hostile.”
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