Florida grandmother, 70, tasered 3 times, tackled to ground after she refused to let police into her house
MANATEE COUNTY, FLORIDA: A 70-year-old Florida woman was tasered by sheriff's deputies a day after Christmas when she refused to let them into her house.
Barbara Pinkney told WFLA that at 7:30 am on December 26, Manatee County officers showed up at her doorstep to serve an arrest warrant to Tevin Turner, her grandson, on violation of probation for carrying a concealed weapon.
“We heard a knock at the door. Actually, there wasn’t a knock. I think they kicked the door. Bam! Bam! At the door,” Pinkney said.
The grandmother, who had never had any trouble with law enforcement, said that Turner had given her home address as his residence but he was not living there anymore. However, the deputies were still under the impression that her grandson was living at the residence; they wanted to be let into the house so that they could search it.
A video recorded by Pinkney's granddaughter-in-law, Elizabeth Francisco, shows her refusing to let the officers into her house and trying to close the door. As she tried to back away from the entrance, she was grabbed by the wrist by one of the officers and tasered, after which she was tackled to the ground.
“I was just hollering. I was scared. I didn’t know what else to do. I was just hollering,” Pinkney said.
According to a probable cause affidavit, reviewed by WFLA, Pinkney was struck three times with a stun gun - on her “left arm,” her “back,” her “upper back” -before being held to the ground with the deputy’s “knee.” Injury marks were still all over her body.
She was also arrested for obstruction and resisting an officer. “It’s not something that you see every day or something you expect to happen. Even if she wasn’t my grandmother. Dang, this is a 70-year-old woman,” said Francisco, Pinkney’s granddaughter-in-law.
Pinkey, whose court date is set for Jan. 17, 2020, said that she has trouble sleeping at night ever since the incident happened. “I don’t know. Whenever I see police I just try to not look at them,” Pinkney added.