Former Atlanta Police Sargent Trevor King Convicted On Federal Charges of Using Excessive Force

Tyrone Carnegay (Photo credit: WSBTV

On October 13, 2014, a Walmart customer in Atlanta, Georgia was attacked by a security guard, accused of shoplifting.  The security officer was 48-year old, off-duty Atlanta police Sargent Trevor King.

King used his department issued expandable baton hitting the customer multiple times, breaking the customer’s leg in two places.  King alleged to seeing the customer, 53-year old Tyrone Carnegay, weigh a tomato then try to exit the store without paying.  However, Tyrone had a receipt for the tomato in the bag.

In April 2016, Tyrone filed a lawsuit. His attorney, Craig Jones, told the NY Daily News:

“He got whacked seven or eight times across the shin and actually broke both bones, both the fibula and the tibula,” Carnegay’s lawyer, Craig Jones, told the Daily News. “This tomato not only cost him the dollar they overcharged him. It also cost him over $75,000 in medical bills, which I intend to get them to pay many times over.”

The lawsuit names Walmart, King and another employee as defendants.

Tyrone was chained to his hospital bed.  The broken leg wasn’t his only injury.  He also suffered a ruptured artery that later oozed blood out of his cast.

Because of the cost of the tomato, Tyrone believed that he was overcharged, and after paying for it, returned to the produce section and checked the price on a scale.  He went back in line to challenge the cost, but then decided not to and left the line.  A security employee alerted King who assumed that Tyrone was leaving the store without paying for the tomato.  Tyrone had actually bought $20 worth of items in the store.

After the lawsuit was filed, the Atlanta Police Department opened an investigation.