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Confrontation in Garner intersection leads to lawsuit against town, police officer

A woman who was involved in an altercation with a Garner police officer two years ago has filed a lawsuit against the officer, the town and local officials.

Posted Updated

By
Amanda Lamb
, WRAL reporter
GARNER, N.C. — A woman who was involved in an altercation with a Garner police officer two years ago has filed a lawsuit against the officer, the town and local officials.

Angela Crowder said her civil rights were violated in the March 26, 2018, scuffle in the intersection of Timber Drive and Woodland Road.

Crowder said she was with her daughter when a family friend, Jakirra Hendrix, called for help. Hendrix had taken a car belonging to her mother’s boyfriend without authorization and had run out of gas.

When Crowder arrived at the intersection where Hendrix was with the car, Officer William Hughes was already on the scene, talking with Hendrix. According to footage from Hughes' body-worn camera, Crowder entered the intersection to see what was going on, and the officer asked her to get out of the road.

"Stop yelling at me," Crowder told Hughes.

"Don't come up here," Hughes responded. "I'm going to put you in handcuffs. Go over there so I can talk to you in a minute."

Seconds later, Hughes grabbed Crowder's wrist, and a struggle began.

Video from the dashboard camera in Hughes' patrol car shows Crowder pushing the officer away, then him putting his arms around her neck and punching her in the head.

"He took and yanked my arm, and that's what started everything," Crowder told WRAL News in an exclusive interview. "From there, I got punched in the face. I just remember him punching me in my forehead, and that's all I remember."

Things escalated when Crowder's daughter and Hendrix jumped into the fray.

"I thought that I was going to die with my daughter watching," Crowder said recently.

Crowder was charged with felony assault on a law enforcement officer. The charge was later reduced to a misdemeanor, but it is still pending.

"Our office will continue to review this matter, keeping in mind the dictates of officer safety and appropriate community interaction by law enforcement," Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said.

Hughes, who resigned from the Garner Police Department in July 2019, didn't respond to requests for comment this week.

Terri Jones, Garner's town attorney, declined to comment on the lawsuit, adding that officials haven't yet seen it.

Jones also noted that a YouTube video showing the confrontation "as compiled and edited is not an official recording of the Garner Police Department." Under state law, police body-cam and dash-cam videos can be released publicly only under court order.

Crowder said the incident has taken an emotional toll on her life.

"I'm scared. I'm nervous. I cry. I'm not a hundred percent sure of myself," she said.

She said she filed the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, not just for herself, but also for others who find themselves in similar situations.

"It's like the government don't care, said it's OK, that we don't matter," she said. "That's not true because we do. We matter in every way."

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