Woman runs off with fake ID from cop at Georgia bar — and gets Tased, video shows
A video showing a police officer on top of a woman and shocking her with a Taser in the tourist beach town of Tybee Island, Georgia, went viral over the weekend on Facebook.
The video had more than 96,000 views as of midday Tuesday.
But police in Tybee said the smartphone video, shared on Facebook at about 1:40 a.m. Saturday, only showed part of the story. So the department released its own footage from security and body-worn cameras on social media Tuesday to show what led to the small, blonde woman fighting with police on the sidewalk.
A bouncer at a bar on Tybee’s main drag can be seen holding an ID away from a woman trying to grab it back from him. Police body cam video shows the officer walk up and look at the identification card. The woman, later identified as Olivia Jane Simons, looks directly at the officer before grabbing the ID and running down the street with a friend she called Jessica.
The chase through the beach town’s tourist district doesn’t last long before the Savannah, Georgia, woman trips and rolls to the sidewalk. The officer gets on top of her to put handcuffs on her, but she fights back, which is shown from several angles of video and detailed in the police incident report.
“You’re about to get Tased,” the officer tells her. “OK, OK,” she says on the video as the body cam is knocked from the police officer’s vest. But she kept fighting, and a man on the sidewalk tried to pull the officer off, according to the report.
After warning the woman again, the officer shocks her with a Taser.
The man off to the side also got arrested after the report says he punched an officer and tried to grab his gun. Richard Harper Stutts, from Rock Hill, South Carolina, is charged with assault on a law enforcement officer.
Another woman, a bystander, started yelling at the police in the video and refused to leave. Alecia Nicholle Adams of Talladega, Ala., got arrested too, the incident reports say, and was also shocked with a Taser when she refused to get in the back of the patrol car and bit a police officer.
Adams is charged with resisting arrest, public drunkenness and other crimes.
The woman shown running and fighting with police, Simons, faces four charges, including public drunkenness and obstructing a law enforcement officer.
Police say they are still looking for the woman who was with Simons and ran from police at the beginning of the incident.
“We are aware of a viral video circulating on social media regarding the arrest of a man and two women over this past weekend,” Tybee police said on Facebook. “We understand that the contents of that video are disturbing to some viewers. What’s important to remember, is that the video we’ve seen starts well after the initial incident has begun and lacks context.”
This story was originally published August 6, 2019 at 2:58 PM with the headline "Woman runs off with fake ID from cop at Georgia bar — and gets Tased, video shows."
