Posted 4:16 pm Tuesday, March 08, 2011
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Overton Officer Injured When Attacked
By KENNETH DEAN
Staff Writer
An Overton police officer is recovering from injuries sustained during a fight with an allegedly intoxicated man he was trying to help.
Staff Writer
An Overton police officer is recovering from injuries sustained during a fight with an allegedly intoxicated man he was trying to help.
Capt. Clayton Taylor said he responded to an unknown type of call at a home on South Lamar Street last week when he spotted an intoxicated man on the ground with a woman sitting next to him in a chair.
“I asked what was going on and she said he was intoxicated. I told her to get him inside and he wouldn’t have to go to jail for public intoxication,” he said.
Taylor said when the woman tried to help the man up he began punching her in the face.
“He just started hitting her right in front of me. I told him to stop and he asked who I was. When I said the police he just started attacking me,” he said.
Taylor said during the ordeal the man, identified as 27-year-old Johnathon Earl Stuckey, hit him in the back of the head several times and knocked his pepper spray away from his reach.
“I finally got my ... baton and used that to hit him several times, because nothing else I was doing was working. Finally it dazed him and I was able to get on him and cuff him,” he said.
Once he had Stuckey in custody, Taylor realized he was hurt.
“My hand was hurting pretty badly so when an Arp officer arrived, he took the suspect to the Smith County Jail and I went to the emergency room at East Texas Medical Center in Henderson where they told me one of the knuckles on my right hand was fractured,” he said.
Stuckey remains jailed on felony assault on a public servant, assault family violence, resisting arrest and a motion to revoke probation from an earlier resisting arrest conviction.
Taylor said he is recovering from the hand injury and the several blows to the head he suffered in the fight and added the incident gave him reason to think about his career.
“It does get you to thinking. A bad thing about being an officer in a small town is that we are all alone when this stuff happens,” he said.
Taylor said when the woman tried to help the man up he began punching her in the face.
“He just started hitting her right in front of me. I told him to stop and he asked who I was. When I said the police he just started attacking me,” he said.
Taylor said during the ordeal the man, identified as 27-year-old Johnathon Earl Stuckey, hit him in the back of the head several times and knocked his pepper spray away from his reach.
“I finally got my ... baton and used that to hit him several times, because nothing else I was doing was working. Finally it dazed him and I was able to get on him and cuff him,” he said.
Once he had Stuckey in custody, Taylor realized he was hurt.
“My hand was hurting pretty badly so when an Arp officer arrived, he took the suspect to the Smith County Jail and I went to the emergency room at East Texas Medical Center in Henderson where they told me one of the knuckles on my right hand was fractured,” he said.
Stuckey remains jailed on felony assault on a public servant, assault family violence, resisting arrest and a motion to revoke probation from an earlier resisting arrest conviction.
Taylor said he is recovering from the hand injury and the several blows to the head he suffered in the fight and added the incident gave him reason to think about his career.
“It does get you to thinking. A bad thing about being an officer in a small town is that we are all alone when this stuff happens,” he said.
