A trio of US police officers have been suspended after footage appears to show them torturing a teenager with a taser while he pleads with them to let him die instead.
Eighteen-year-old Jordan Elias Norris, who was arrested on weapons and drugs charges in November 2016, has now filed a lawsuit against the deputies - claiming they deprived him of his civil rights.
Norris, who was suspected of stealing a semi-automatic rifle with the intention of using it on law enforcement, was stunned several times - including while restrained, according to the lawsuit.
A number of incidents in which he was tasered during his several-day stint in the Cheatham County booking cell were recorded, thanks to cameras in the room and on the tasers themselves.
But it was footage from one particular incident - when he was restrained in a chair in his cell for three hours while the continually stunned him - that is the subject of the lawsuit.
Cheatham County Sheriff Mike Breedlove says he was not originally presented with all the potentially incriminating footage - and he says since coming to light, he has now launched an independent investigation into the incident.
The lawsuit claims that Norris had more than 40 pairs of taser burn marks on his body, and that the officers' use of the weapon "was objectively unreasonable, unnecessary, excessive, and without a legitimate law enforcement purpose".
It also claims that one of the deputies told Norris he would continue stunning him "until I run out of batteries" with what was described as a "sadistic and malicious nature" - while the two other officers stood by and did nothing to intervene.
Newshub.
