South Carolina Deputy in Video of Violent Arrest Is Fired
Surveillance footage at an auto repair shop showed Greenville County sheriff’s deputies hitting a 56-year-old man who was later charged with traffic violations and resisting arrest.
Mechanics at an auto repair shop in Greenville, S.C., were toiling on a busy summer afternoon last month when they heard a commotion outside. According to Nick Simmons, the shop manager, someone was shouting, “Stop resisting!” while another voice asked, “What did I do?”
The workers were overhearing the arrest of Zebbie Hudgens, a 56-year-old Greenville man, by five deputies from the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office. On Tuesday, Mr. Simmons described how a violent encounter on Aug. 1 that began with a few witnesses in a parking lot had been thrust before an ever-widening audience, leading to an investigation and the firing of one of the deputies.
“We ran to the door to see what was going on,” Mr. Simmons said in an interview, describing how he and about nine co-workers at Simuns Tire watched from the bays. “Within 15 seconds, he was being held down by five officers. He kept saying: ‘What did I do? What did I do?’ They were really not answering him at that point in time.”
As Mr. Simmons and his co-workers looked on, the shop’s surveillance cameras were trained on the lot. The recordings show Mr. Hudgens with his arms outstretched, backing away as a deputy charged him and then threw him to the ground.
Later posted on social media, the videos document the moment a deputy banged Mr. Hudgens’s head into the ground, and when he was repeatedly punched by several deputies while pinned down on his stomach with his hands behind his back.
Activists who work with local law enforcement on accountability shared the footage, which has been watched and forwarded hundreds of thousands of times.
On Sept. 11, after an internal investigation, one of the deputies, James Pregel, was terminated for “conduct unbecoming,” a sheriff’s department spokesman, Lt. Ryan Flood, said in an email. Mr. Pregel has the right to appeal, Lieutenant Flood said. He did not immediately provide information about whether there was other disciplinary action.
The Greenville News and other local media in the city, which is tucked into the northwest corner of the state and has a population of more than 68,000, reported last week on the arrest of Mr. Hudgens and the firing of the deputy.
Mr. Simmons’s Facebook page included the videos of the arrest and a cellphone recording of a conversation between the deputies and a worker at Simuns Tire, after the deputies went inside the shop to watch the surveillance video.
In response to being challenged inside the tire shop about whether they had the right to punch a man under arrest, one of the deputies said that Mr. Hudgens was not “complying” and that “we can punch him.”
Mr. Hudgens, who had just parked a car in the lot, was cited for driving under suspension, interfering with the police and defective equipment, traffic tickets show. An affidavit says he was resisting arrest. He took “a fighting stance” and tried to “push away the deputy,” the affidavit said. It said he was “actively trying to flee.”
Jake Erwin, Mr. Hudgens’s lawyer, said on Tuesday that no date had been set for a court appearance. “As of today, all of the charges are still pending and I have not received any communication from the solicitor, nor have I seen anything that indicates that Zebbie did anything wrong,” he said in an email.
He said he was considering civil action on Mr. Hudgens’s behalf.
Traci Fant, a community activist with Freedom Fighters Upstate who has worked on law enforcement accountability, said she had spoken with the Greenville County sheriff, Johnny Mack Brown, after the family of Mr. Hudgens reached out to her, and was told Mr. Hudgens had been followed by members of a drug task force “because he was suspicious.”
Ms. Fant said she was told that the other deputies had been “heavily reprimanded.”
Lieutenant Flood declined to provide further details about whether the other officers would face any discipline.
Mr. Hudgens, who is unemployed and lives with family members, was treated in the hospital for bruising and a cut near his eye, Ms. Fant said.
Mr. Simmons, who grew up in Greenville, described the neighborhood as a struggling, low-income area. He said he believed Mr. Hudgens became confused because the deputies were from a special unit whose members wear uniforms of drab army green, rather than the typical navy blue.
“It is not the greatest neighborhood. If someone starts running toward you from your back…,” Mr. Simmons said, then trailed off.
He noted that Mr. Hudgens had already parked his car when he was tackled. “He didn’t know he was being pulled over.”
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