An Arizona man claims police held him down on hot asphalt while arresting him at the height of Phoenix’s summer heat wave, causing third-degree burns on his body.
Video obtained by CBS News from the man’s attorney shows Michael Kenyon talking on his cellphone walking in a parking lot July 6 when police pulled up in a Phoenix police truck. Two police officers come out and Kenyon puts his phone away. Within minutes, they attempted to handcuff him and a fight ensued. Two backup officers then arrive on scene.
It appears from the video that the four officers pushed Kenyon to the ground and held him there. The officers then struggle with Kenyon before he is finally handcuffed and the officers lift him from the asphalt and escort him into a police vehicle.
Kenyon’s attorney, Bobby DiCello, said he spent more than a month in the hospital after the incident, recovering from asphalt burns.
When officers lifted Kenyon from the asphalt, his melted skin peeled off and fell to the ground, his lawyer said. Police called an ambulance after an officer noticed his burns, police said.
Bobby DiCello
“They held a man – another human being – on a surface so hot that his skin bubbled and bubbled. This defies reason,” DiCello said in a statement, adding that his client was now “scarred for life.”
DiCello said the temperature that day was 114 degrees, with an estimated temperature on the asphalt between 180 and 200 degrees. Phoenix struck 100 consecutive days with temperatures of at least 100 degrees during the summer. Arizona has the nation’s only heating director, and Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located, is the hottest metropolitan area in the United States.
Phoenix police said officers responded to a call about a robbery in progress. “Officers made contact with Kenyon, telling him he was being detained so they could figure out what might have happened. The man struggled with police, leading to him being thrown into the ground on the hot asphalt The man suffered burns in different parts of his body since he was on the ground,” police said in a statement to CBS News.
Police said Kenyon was determined not to be the robbery suspect they were looking for that day. Later, when he was taken to the hospital, officers learned he had a felony warrant out for his arrest.
Phoenix police said its Office of Professional Standards is investigating the incident.
Kris Van Cleave contributed to this report.
