The family of Deacon Johnny Hollman, who died during a traffic stop with the Atlanta police, recently filed a lawsuit against the tow truck driver who reportedly assisted police during the incident.
Hollman’s family filed a civil suit in DeKalb County against tow truck driver Eric Robinson in December, FOX Atlanta reports. The suit alleges that Robinson “straddled the citizen’s head and neck, appearing to sit with his full body weight on the citizen’s head and neck” for 20 seconds during the incident last August, where former police officer Kiran Kimbrough deployed a taser on Hollman and threw him to the ground after he was involved in a minor traffic accident.
While that was happening, the suit states Robinson said in the video, “I ain’t did this s*** in so long, I forgot what it [was] like.”
Hollman was a deacon at Lively Stones of God Ministries on MLK Jr. Dr. in Atlanta. He was on his way to church when the incident occurred on Aug. 10. He died the next day.
As ESSENCE previously reported, Hollman’s family said that after viewing the video of the encounter, the officer’s body cam video showed the 62-year-old man did nothing wrong.
“All he did was disagree with the officer on the accident. As he reaches out to sign the ticket, the officer grabs him by the arm, and he begins to put him into custody. He took him to the ground, and you can hear Mr. Hollomon begging for him to stop. He says, ‘I can’t breathe, please help me,’” the family’s attorney, Mawuli Davis, said at the time.
Davis called the Deacon’s death “the most senseless arrest I have ever seen in my entire career.” “He was killed over a ticket,” he said.
The former officer was fired, with the police chief citing his termination due to him not waiting for a supervisor to arrive on the scene.
According to the autopsy performed by the medical examiner’s office, the Deacon had “cuts to his tongue, abrasions to the head, bruising to the back, torso, left hip, right and left shoulders, both elbows, right forearms, wounds to the right hand, and cuts to the knees.”
The family’s lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages in response to the incident.
