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Mother sues school after police use stun gun on special-needs student

Crossville Chronicle - 6/7/2018

KATY, TX (KTRK/CNN) - A Texas mother is demanding answers from her son's school district after police officers used a stun gun on him at school.

Body camera video showing the incident with the special-needs student has been released. The 2016 video shows 17-year-old Jevon Washington trying to leave school, after getting frustrated in class.

"Can I just go, man," he says to officers in the video. "This is making me worry, this is making it worse."

Moments later he opens the school door, but an officer appears to hold him back and then use the stun gun.

"I did not want to tase you, but you don't run (expletive) here. You understand?" the officer says in the video.

Jevon's mother Lori Washington has watched the video countless times and wants answers.

"This was not necessary," she said. "It was excessive force."

On the video, the officer explains why he used the Taser.

"He tried to leave, Miss Dole tried to stop him, I jumped in," he says. "He still tried to get out the door, Molina jumped in, he still tried to get out the door, I got tired of wrestling with him so I popped him."

Lori Washington said her son has the mental state of a 9-year-old and has trouble communicating when he's upset. She wants to know why the officer didn't first try to de-escalate the situation.

"He has nightmares," she said. "Every so often you hear him hollering don't tase me, or stop it. We have to wake him up out of his sleep."

Katy Independent School District did not respond to a request for their use of force policy or if there was any investigation into the incident.

Instead, they released statement saying in part, "As is the case with many legal matters, the district is not in the position to comment on pending litigation. However, the safety of all of our students is our number one priority."

Lori Washington is suing the school district over the matter.

"And I'm not saying that everybody in KISD are bad people," she said. "I just said this situation was handled wrongly, and I want it corrected because I don't want to see any other child or parent go through what I went through."

Copyright 2018 KTRK via CNN. All rights reserved.