Deputies responded to home for welfare check. Family says they put teen in chokehold.

Madison County sheriff’s deputies placed 18-year old Darshae Bruck in a chokehold during a welfare check Monday evening, according to videos shared on social media by Bruck’s mother, Laurie Bruck.

In an interview with the Herald-Leader, Laurie said that Darshae Bruck has bipolar disorder and that she told officers this multiple times before they interacted with him.

When deputies showed up, Bruck was asleep and Laurie answered the door. She said she told the officers she already knew about the social media posts, and that he had made a second post afterwards stating that he was calling his therapist of eight years for help. The deputies asked her to wake him up to talk to him.

Once Darshae confirmed to the deputies that he had made the social media post, they said they were going to bring him to Eastern State Hospital to receive medical help. He refused. Laurie put his therapist on the line and asked officers to let Darshae talk to them instead of going to the hospital.

“I’ve been to five hospitals already,” Darshae Bruck said. “I don’t like them—every time I was in one I got mistreated in some way, shape or form.”

The deputies still insisted on taking him with them, Laurie said. When Darshae tried to go back inside his home, he said Deputy Petry grabbed him. Laurie said this can cause people with bipolar disorder to go into a manic state.

At that point, Bruck said he walked off towards his neighbor’s house, because that’s what he had been told to do by his therapist in similar situations. His father followed him to help calm him down.

Just as he was calming down, Bruck said, Petry came over and told him that he was coming with him to the hospital. After he repeated that he was fine and walked away again, Petry tackled him and at one point put him into a chokehold, Darshae Bruck said.

His two siblings and a neighbor had been recording the incident, in videos since posted to social media. Laurie told the officers that they were on camera, she said. The videos show Bruck’s family calling for the deputies to get off of him and Darshae screaming that he couldn’t breathe.

“The whole time he was saying, ‘If you can talk, you can breathe,’” Darshae Bruck said.

Deputy Petry can be heard saying this in one of the videos. At one point, Bruck bit Petry in order to get air, he said.

The incident ended with Bruck being charged with third degree assault (police officer, communicable liquid) for biting Petry and resisting arrest. According to Laurie, he was released on bond late Monday night.

“My son wasn’t arrested, it was a welfare check,” she said. “Where was the welfare, where was the counsel, where was someone who knew how to handle a bipolar person…where was the training here?”

Darshae Bruck said that during the hours he was in jail, no police officer or counselor checked up with him regarding his mental health.

“Apparently they didn’t care for his health because he’s home,” Laurie said. “If they were so concerned about his health, he would have said, ‘Okay, well when you make bond you gotta go to Eastern State to get evaluated.’”

According to the Richmond Register, Deputy Petry wrote in the arrest citation that he had used a “vascular restraint” on Bruck.

Madison County Sheriff Mike Coyle said that the department is currently conducting a response to resistance investigation to try to determine the “totality of circumstances” at the scene.

“We don’t use chokeholds,” Sheriff Coyle said. “That is not what the (deputy) training entails.”

Sheriff Coyle said that the department will not make an official statement until the investigation has concluded, but that they are going to continue to perform welfare checks to work for the safety of Madison County residents.

“When we respond, we are naturally looking out for the best interest of that person,” Coyle said.

Laurie said that on Wednesday, she has to go to the sheriff’s office to make a statement and provide evidence for the investigation. She also said a few officers visited her Tuesday morning to investigate “the resisting arrest part, but not the excessive force part” of Monday evening’s incident.

Laurie alleges that the arrest citation leaves certain details out, such as Bruck’s father calming him down and her telling the officers that he was bipolar.

Darshae said that he is okay now and at home.

“I hope that man loses his badge,” he said. “He deserves it after what he did.”

This story was originally published June 30, 2020 at 6:25 PM.