43
Tasered woman settles lawsuit for $300,000
By ED RUNYAN
WARREN
Heidi Gill, who was repeatedly shocked with a stun gun by a Warren police officer outside Up A Creek Tavern in 2007, has settled a federal lawsuit with the city for a six-figure amount.
Court documents say that the suit filed against Officer Richard Kovach and other Warren officials was dismissed July 29.
Mayor Michael O’Brien told WFMJ, The Vindicator’s broadcast partner, that the settlement amount is $300,000. The city’s insurance deductible is $250,000.
Councilman Bob Dean estimates that officers had been issued stun guns less than a year before the Gill incident. Since then, they have received “a lot” of additional training.
Further, officers rarely respond to incidents without backup anymore, Dean added.
Judge Donald Nugent, in a document filed July 27, gave the following account of the Sept. 2, 2007, incident:
Gill, formerly of Niles, was asked to leave the tavern and was escorted out by security guard Shawn Tisher in the early morning. Her blood-alcohol level was later recorded at 0.30, nearly four times the legal limit of 0.08.
As Tisher and Gill were leaving the tavern, they passed Kovach, who was on patrol. Tisher explained what was happening to Kovach, who asked Gill for her name and Social Security number.
Gill gave false information and ran toward the parking lot, getting into a vehicle owned by John Turner, another tavern security guard. Kovach said he twice told Gill to exit the vehicle, but Gill refused, so Kovach fired his stun gun at her.
Gill says the next thing that happened was that Kovach used his stun gun on her a second time, causing her to fall out of the vehicle, and that Kovach used the stun gun on her a third time while she was on the ground and pushed her to the ground with a foot to her back.
She says Kovach used the stun gun a fourth time as she tried to stand up. Videotape, and the stun gun’s memory chip, indicate Kovach used the stun-gun a fifth time in 36 seconds just before handcuffing her, the judge’s account says.
Gill admits she screamed and kicked the rear cruiser door multiple times while inside the back of the cruiser. Kovach used the stun-gun on her a sixth time just after she quit kicking, the document says.
Kovach ordered Gill to walk from that cruiser to one with a metal prisoner “cage” in the back. He didn’t touch her but led her by the stun-gun wires, but on the way there, she either stumbled or ran, and Kovach used the stun gun a seventh time.
Gill fell to the ground and was knocked unconscious.
Kovach said he used the stun gun a third time while she was in the back of the cruiser because she was kicking, screaming and trying to get into the front seat.
Kovach said he used the stun gun a fourth time when she ran away from the second cruiser and toward a crowd. This was just before she was knocked unconscious.
Analysis of Kovach’s stun gun indicated he had activated it seven times in five minutes.
The judge indicated that police department policy called for photographs to be taken of the places on a suspect’s body where a stun gun is applied, but that was not done on Gill.
“Furthermore, the clothing that Ms. Gill wore when Officer Kovach Tasered her went missing,” the judge wrote.
Sgt. Michael Merritt, a fellow officer of Kovach’s, later was given a written reprimand for not properly handling Gill’s clothing, which resulted in her clothing’s being lost.
The U.S. Justice Department later cleared Kovach from criminal charges, but former Police Chief John Mandopoulos suspended Kovach without pay for 60 days for “not taking charge of [his] prisoner and helping her to the second cruiser” and for lying while being questioned by Sgt. Jeff Cole during an internal- affairs investigation.