Leskeil Richards initially drew the suspicion of police because he was not wearing a seatbelt while riding passenger in a Land Rover driven by his sister Sunday afternoon in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami.
The sister was also “moving faster than the normal flow of traffic,” according to a police report obtained by the Miami Herald.
But the 25-year-old man, who had an active warrant over a strong-armed robbery arrest, climbed into the back seat and acted as if he were sleeping. When the cop ordered him out of the car, he “appeared to be looking for an avenue of escape,” which is when they began using force on him.
However, nowhere in the report did police mention an officer used a chokehold banned by the department “unless intended as deadly force to save lives,” the Herald reports. The chokehold was captured on video by a witness from the backseat of a car.
There was also no mention in the report of what appeared to be a heated conversation between the muscular Miami cop who placed him in a chokehold and the Miami-Dade cop who appeared not to approve of the punching and choking on the suspect.
Richards, meanwhile, has slipped from their hands by escaping from the county hospital he was transported to as a result of the injuries he suffered at the hands of police.