A New York woman and her father are speaking out about the son who died after being restrained by officers while being held in a chokehold during a traffic stop.
The woman, identified as Jennifer C. and described as Hispanic and aged 25, was handcuffed by two officers in Brooklyn on Sunday afternoon, a police source told ABC News.
“We were waiting on the sidewalk,” Jennifer C., who was a passenger in a vehicle, told ABC affiliate WABC.
“The officers told me that they wanted me to put my hands behind my back and let them handcuff me.
I did not comply and I was put in a headlock.”
She was then handcuffed and dragged into the car, she said.
Jennifer C. said the officers handcuffed her and then pushed her into the back seat of the car.
The driver, identified only as the officer in this video, also had his hand on his gun, according to the source.
“The officer said, ‘You don’t need to be yelling, you don’t have to be doing anything,’ ” Jennifer C told WABC, and added, “I kept saying, ‘I’m not yelling, I’m not doing anything.'”
“They started beating me, and I kept screaming, and then they pushed me into the front seat,” she added.
“They told me, ‘Don’t you know you can’t say a word?
You can’t talk?’
And I kept saying no.”
Jennifer C., a single mother of two young children, was then taken to a hospital where she was pronounced dead, the source said.
The source said the woman was also taken to the hospital for a cardiac arrest and had died the same day.
The Brooklyn district attorney’s office is reviewing the circumstances surrounding the incident.
“I hope that the death of my son was not an accident,” the source told WACH.
“I hope it’s not an act of violence.
I hope that this death was not intentional, because I do not want that to happen again.”
Police did not respond to a request for comment.
