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An Atlanta panhandler left paralyzed by falling and breaking his neck after being shocked by a police officer’s stun gun during a foot pursuit four years ago was awarded $100 million on Friday.
A federal jury awarded $100 million to now 69-year-old Jerry Blasingame in a civil lawsuit stemming from injuries incurred on July 10, 2018, while being chased by Atlanta Police Officer Jon Grubbs.
Blasingame, who was unarmed, was asking people for money and speaking with a driver near Windsor Street, when Grubbs and another officer were patrolling the downtown area, according to the filing.
Grubbs got out of the patrol car and allegedly told Blasingame to stop, but the man ran out of the street and toward a guard rail, so the officer pursued him on foot and deployed his Taser.
Atlanta police vehicle on watch. (Getty Images)
The shock caused Blasingame to fall and seriously injured himself. He became unconscious and was bleeding profusely from his head while the officer called for medical assistance.
Blasingame was transported to a trauma center at Grady Memorial Hospital. Since then, he lives at an around-the-clock facility rendered a "prisoner in his own body" with a severe spinal cord injury, and unable to use all four of his limbs, according to Blasingame's attorney, Ven Johnson.
"Grubbs gets out of the car and starts chasing my client — a 65-year-old man— and for what? For potentially asking people for money?" Johnson said during closing arguments, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"You run from the police, you get what you sow. That’s what some people think. But that’s not so," he added. "Jerry Blasingame matters. Jerry Blasingame, and his suffering."
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in 2019 on behalf of Blasingame’s conservator Keith Edwards, sued the city of Atlanta and Grubbs himself, alleging that the man has accrued $14 million in medical bills, and will accrue an additional $1 million per year going forward to withstand his around-the-clock care.
"The record would allow the jury to find that Mr. Blasingame had not been committing a serious crime before he was tased/that Officer Grubbs did not fear for his safety/ and that the exigent circumstances were not otherwise so severe as to permit Officer Grubbs’s use of force," Judge Steve Jones said in his ruling Friday, according to FOX 5 Atlanta.
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After the incident, Grubbs was placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation, but he was reportedly allowed to return to his full capacity of duties six months later.
