A California woman who was seen on body-camera video being punched by a deputy as she held her newborn baby has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Los Angeles County and several unnamed sheriff's deputies stemming from the 2022 incident.
The lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of the woman, Yeayo Russell, and her son alleges the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department "has had a practice and a custom of using excessive force against Antelope Valley residents, specifically using force against Black women," attorney Jamon Hicks said in a news conference.
CNN has requested comment from the sheriff's department.
The interaction happened in July 2022, after deputies stopped a car in the city of Palmdale they say was driving at night without headlights on and during the stop smelled an odor of alcohol, Sheriff Robert Luna said in a July 12 news conference. Russell and her child were among four females and three infants in the vehicle, all of whom were passengers.
Deputies saw that the babies were being held in their mothers' arms rather than in car seats, and made the decision to arrest the mothers and male driver for felony child endangerment, Luna said.
The sheriff said the confrontation involved use of force on two of the women "to effect the arrest to try and gain control of the infants."
"One of these uses of force involved a mother and her 3-week-old infant who was refusing to let go of her child during the encounter, a deputy punched the female twice in the face," Luna said.
The incident was captured on bodycam video that was released by the sheriff earlier this month.
The video shows a woman refusing to hand over a child, and screaming, "You all are gonna have to shoot me dead to take my baby from my f**king arms ... I'm not about to let you take my baby on my life."
At one point a deputy can be heard saying, "You're going to hurt the baby." Several deputies move closer to take the child as the mother yells, "You're breaking his f**king legs!"
Seconds later, and partially blocked from view, a deputy can be seen lunging his arm twice in the direction of the woman, who screams, then shouts, "You all punched me, bro!"
After the confrontation, the woman was taken to a hospital with a complaint of pain, the sheriff's department told CNN in an email.
Russell's attorney said Tuesday that the mother didn't know where her child was for "a long period of time" after she was taken into custody.
"This case is about more than those punches," Hicks said at a news conference. "When Miss Russell was in jail for four days -- hours and hours she had no idea where her child was. Hours and hours she had no idea if her child was OK."
Luna announced on July 12 he took disciplinary action against the deputy -- about one year after the incident. "He's not in the field, and that's as far as I can take it," Luna said, adding that he can't elaborate further.
"I found the punching of the woman in the circumstances completely unacceptable," said Luna, who was sworn in as sheriff in December 2022.
The use of force was assigned to the Internal Affairs Bureau for investigation shortly after the incident -- before Luna became sheriff -- and it was recently brought to his attention by an area chief "because he was extremely concerned about what he had seen on the body-worn camera," he said.
"I took swift action upon learning about this incident several days ago," Luna said during the July 12 news conference, adding that the case has been sent to the district attorney for criminal consideration and that the Los Angeles FBI office will also investigate.
The actions of other deputies and supervisors who were on scene that day will be reviewed, he added.
"I cannot speak to what my predecessor did or did not do," Luna said on July 12. "The action that I'm describing to you today is action that I took in the last couple of days."
Alex Villanueva, who was sheriff when the incident happened, told CNN Luna failed to share the full context of the incident and "threw the deputy under the bus" by releasing only a select portion of the total body camera footage. "The sheriff falsely framed the narrative and gave a limited view of the video," Villanueva said.
Villanueva said this incident was in the process of a normal investigation, which typically lasts six to nine months. It happened about five months before he left office.
He believes deputies intervened because they feared Russell was hurting her child and using him as a shield.
"I'm pretty sure the deputy threw punches because the mother was hurting the baby," said Villanueva, who credits his own effort in implementing a body-worn camera system in the sheriff's department as the only reason the incident was captured on video.
Hicks, Russell's attorney, calls Villanueva's assertions "ridiculous."
"The video shows that when the deputy punches her, she was doing nothing but holding her child," said Hicks. "The audio makes it clear as well."
Hicks adds that Russell's sister was on scene at the time she was punched. He says deputies could have just allowed her to hand the baby over to her sister and avoided the entire incident.
