Tawon Boyd Dead After Alleged Fight With Police Who Responded To 911 Call For Medical Assistance


A 21-year old man named Tawon Boyd from Baltimore County, Maryland died on Wednesday after an altercation with police officers. Boyd called 911 for assistance, asking to be taken to the hospital. The family’s attorney said that Boyd was feeling disoriented and needed medical assistance. When police showed up, rather than take him to receive medical treatment, the responding county officers beat him unconscious and Tawon Boyd later died from his injuries.

When police arrived on the scene, Tawon seemed “disoriented and confused” according to their own report. That lines up with exactly what the victim himself told a 911 operator when asking for transport to a local hospital. The Guardian reported that officers proceeded to fight with Tawon Boyd, kicking and punching him rather than administering emergency medical assistance as he requested.

Initially, there were conflicting reports over who actually called 911. It was reported that a woman called for help but lawyer Latoya Francis-Williams says that was not the case and that Boyd called for help on his own. The possible confusion was due to a female voice in the background yelling for responders, pleading, “Please hurry up!”

“They really were supposed to be there to get him to the nearest healthcare facility,” Francis-Williams said in a statement.

When Baltimore County police officers arrived at Tawon Boyd’s home, they reported that he invited them inside before saying that his girlfriend Deona Styron “got him intoxicated and is secretly recording him while someone else is in the home.” In the police report, officers wrote that Boyd was either “under the influence of a narcotic” or that he was suffering from a medical condition that has been redacted from the reports due to medical privacy laws. Boyd’s uncle Prinice Thomas told the Associated Press that Tawon had never, to his knowledge, used any sort of drug besides marijuana.

Boyd’s lawyer claims that while in the home, police attempted to restrain him in what she describes as an attack. “He is literally attacked. And by attacked, I mean the witness [Styron] is describing that he struck many times and struck to the ground,” Francis-Williams said in her statement. “Officer Bowman is the one that when he arrived, really started wailing on Mr. Boyd, meaning Mr. Boyd was on the ground in a prone position and Bowman sat on him, almost straddled his back, and put his left arm under Boyd’s neck and pulled his head up in a choking fashion.”

According to the incident, the arresting officer requested that paramedics check on Tawon Boyd before transporting him to the hospital. They did record that he had a pulse when he was removed, unconscious, from his home. While police are reporting that the cause of Boyd’s death is still undetermined and an autopsy is underway, his grandma is pointing a finger directly at police who responded to his 911 call.

Tawon Boyd’s grandmother was living in Boyd’s home and witnessed the altercation as it unfolded. “They kept on grabbing on him and holding him down, and he started screaming, ‘Grandma, Grandma, they’re going to kill me,'” Linda Burch said according to ABC News.

“I think they killed him,” Burch said. “By them being so many, and they tall and big, and he’s small. It didn’t take all them police just to try to hold him down.”

Linda Burch also told the Baltimore Sun, “I kept telling them stop before they hurt him because I told them they could kill him like that. They told me to go across the street before they lock me up.”

Boyd was just 5-foot-5 and reports indicate that he weighed anywhere from 122 to 150 pounds. Francis-Williams said that she is still looking into the events that transpired but that there is no indication that Tawon Boyd was violent before officers attacked him.

“Blows to the head, choking somebody — that’s deadly force,” Francis-Williams said. “I haven’t heard any officer articulate that his or her life was in danger or there was an actual threat of severe bodily injury or death.”

Tawon Boyd was finally transported to the hospital after the altercation with police but at that point, he was already unconscious and would never wake up. After three days in intensive care, Boyd died. Although the autopsy has not been performed yet, Tawon Boyd’s lawyer released a statement that claims he suffered from “swelling on the brain and fluid on the brain because the doctors attempted to drain that. My understanding is his kidneys end up failing and at some point, his heart stops.”

None of the officers involved were wearing body cameras even though the program has been implemented within the department. An autopsy is expected to be completed within the month and both the Baltimore County police and fire departments are conducting reviews on the incident.

[Featured Image by Tawon Boyd/ Facebook]

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