ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — A former St. Johns County deputy is out of a job and facing aggravated battery charges, accused of beating a man during a December traffic stop and kicking him in the face while another law enforcement officer repeatedly shocked him with a Taser.
Sheriff David Shoar said he withdrew the commission of Deputy Anthony Deleo Thursday and filed criminal charges against him during a use-of-force investigation. Cellphone video from a witness captured the moments after Deleo and several other law enforcement officers appeared to strike the victim several times.
A warrant affidavit states Deleo was assisting a Florida Highway Patrol trooper with a traffic stop on a vehicle for failure to yield around 1:15 a.m. on Dec. 29, in the Winn Dixie shopping center at 2220 County Road 210. Deleo approached the vehicle and tried to pull 30-year-old Christopher Butler from the car, according to the warrant.
WARNING: VIDEO CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE
The warrant says once Butler was out of the car, several officers started yelling at him to get on the ground, but he instead stood up, facing away from the officers "in a non-threatening manner." Deleo then struck Butler with his baton and the trooper shocked him with his Taser while Butler walked away from the officers, according to the warrant.
Video shows Deleo hitting Butler 19 times with his baton and kicked him in the head and face for the next three minutes and 44 seconds, the warrant says. At the time, Butler was naked and unarmed.
The warrant says Deleo made little to no effort to handcuff Butler, while video shows Butler offering little to no resistance while seated "in a non-threatening manner."
Butler was taken to the hospital for injuries consistent with the strikes captured on video, the warrant says.
The charges against Deleo are listed as a second-degree principal felony of aggravated battery causing bodily harm or disability.
Butler is still in jail on warrants out of Lake County. He was charged in St. Johns County on fleeing or eluding police, battery and DUI.
In an email to the sheriff's office, Shoar said there is still an active internal affairs investigation regarding the incident. Two other deputies are still under investigation, according to the sheriff's office.
Butler's mother, Teri Morgenstern is happy Deleo has been charged but says her family is not done fighting for justice.
“I’m grateful, I’m happy," Morgenstern said. "This is one step closer to showing police brutality exists in every state in every county. It doesn’t matter your race, it happens. And we need to get this out there so it doesn’t happen to someone else’s kid. I don’t want him to leave this county and go to Duval and become an officer there tomorrow because they can if we don’t go get his certification. I want his certification gone. I don’t want it to be your child or your child or another one of my children to be beaten—savagely beaten, like he beat Christopher.”