Trevor King, 50, a former sergeant with the Atlanta Police Department, was convicted last year of two federal charges for using excessive force during an October 2014 arrest in which he beat a man over a stolen tomato at a Walmart.
The only problem: Tyrone Carnegay actually paid for his tomato, and had a receipt for it.
But King never asked for it.
On Monday, he was sentenced to five years in federal prison.
“He got what he deserved because he did me wrong,” Tyrone Carnegay told WSB-TV.
Carnegay says King never even asked him with a receipt before he began beating him with his baton.
“He got whacked seven or eight times across the shin and actually broke both bones, both the fibula and the tibula,” Carnegay’s lawyer, Craig Jones said, told the New York Daily News.
“This tomato not only cost him the dollar they overcharged him. It also cost him over $75,000 in medical bills, which I intend to get them to pay many times over.”
According to Jones, a security employee saw Carnegay get back into the checkout line so he could get a refund but then decided not to and proceeded to exit the store on Oct. 12th, 2014.
Assuming he’d stolen the tomato, the employee went to Trevor King about it, the Atlanta cop who was moonlighting as a security guard that night.
Without asking him for a receipt, King approached and beat Carnegay.
Carnegay described the beating to WSB-TV as he watched the video of himself being beaten.
“He’s giving me a verbal command. As he’s grabbing me, he’s beating me at the same time. ‘Get on ground!’ Beating me at the same time.”
Carnegay was struck by King’s baton at least seven times.
“Somebody could have come up to him and said, ‘Excuse me sir, do you have (a) receipt for that tomato?’ and he would’ve shown him the receipt,” Jones told WSB-TV. “The officer went into Robocop mode and beat the crap out of him.”
After the incident, a spokesperson for the Atlanta Police Department referred to an incident report that said Carnegay pushed his way past the loss prevention officer as well as King when he was asked to return the stolen items that he had purchased.
King stated he beat Carnegay with his baton only after he ignored his commands to get on the ground and said that Carnegay pulled on King’s gun belt during the struggle.
However, that’s not what the video shows.
“When he found the receipt and the money and everything, he just stared at it like he hadn’t done nothing,” said Carnegay.
Carnegay says he’s still in pain from the beating.
“I’ve got a broken leg. I’ve got a titanium pole in it. I have a couple knots and infections from bolts,” he said.
Carnegay and his attorney filed a civil suit against Walmart.
