82 old frail lady gets body slammed by cops nearly caused riot

On the night of August 1, at a Whitehall, Ohio Walmart, Virginia Dodson could not remember why she was sitting alone in a car. Coming to grips with her enclosed environment, it dawned on her that she did not know how to unbuckle her seat belt either. Panic began to take hold.

Her solution was to scrounge up a steak knife and cut through the straps, eventually finding her way into the confusing world of the parking lot, still wielding the blade.

Virginia, an 84-year-old African American, has Alzheimer’s disease. Like many other sufferers, the responsibility for her care fell to her adult child. Her daughter, however, was inside the store.

It was only a short matter of time before the police were called.

As she wandered the parking lot calling her daughter’s name, she was approached by a white, female officer who clearly ordered her to drop the weapon. She did not.

What happened next was captured on video and uploaded that same night to YouTube by user “mainetaine187,” who says on camera as the scene escalates, “We gotta get real footage of this shit,

A witness to the scene, one Tomya Beatty, quoted by the local NBC affiliate station, said: “She didn’t even ask her to drop the knife. The woman told her when the cop came charging at her. She said, ‘I’m not going to cut you. I’m not going to cut you.’ She was just calling her daughter’s name out.”

While the video contradicts Beatty’s statement that the officer said nothing about the knife, the use of force against an obviously frail woman is apparent. As the video progresses, a noisy scene develops around the officers as the confused old woman lays on the ground, bleeding.

Beatty, again quoted by NBC, said, “There was about to be a riot in front of Walmart…”

“Dotson’s daughter said her mother needed stitches to close the wounds and her hand may have been broken,” added NBC4i.

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