The cop who tasered a teenager while accosting him for his license plate was sentenced to four years in prison by the Missouri federal court in early June. Officer Timothy Runnels flagged Bruce Master in 2014, but the incident led to the boy's cardiac arrest and long physical and emotional recovery after Runnels tasered him.
Bryce Masters, then 17, was pulled over by Officer Runnels and was told that his car's license plate was linked to a suspect. He asked Masters to get out of the car, but the teenager instead kept asking if he was under arrest.
When Bryce Masters refused to get out, Officer Runnels forcibly pulled the boy from the car as he was tasered by the cop. The footage of the tasing incident was released by the court's judge last week, per CNN. It showed that Bryce Masters screamed and then dropped to the ground.
Watch sickening footage of cop tasering Bryce Masters into coma https://t.co/4wFIrhQC9A pic.twitter.com/5Cpq6YRyJ8
— Cop Crisis (@copcrisis) June 7, 2016
Per Huffington Post, court records indicate that the officer tasered Bryce Masters for 20 seconds, which was four times the equivalent of what should have been a non-lethal action. Then the cop dragged the boy and dropped his head on the pavement hard before cuffing him. A loud thud could be heard in the video and the boy was visibly unresponsive.
Bryce Masters suffered cardiac arrest and brain damage as a result of this incident and his mom and dad were told the boy might not come out of a coma or be in a vegetative state for the rest of his life, per The Intercept. The investigation into his case took further twists and turns as he was accused of being a drug user. The FBI later became a part of the investigation and the family believed the authorities were determined to justify the extreme use of force. Bryce Masters dad is actually also a cop.
The Intercept: Bryce Masters: Tased for 23 seconds, dead for eight minutes, now facing a lifetime of recovery https://t.co/cg2qEvLXAk
— Matt Trevithick (@M_Trevithick) June 8, 2016
The teenager had a long and hard recovery and rehabilitation, sans lapses in memory of what really happened that day. For a time, Bryce also shut down socially and encountered sleep problems. At the back of his mind, he believed that other people might think he deserved what happened on the basis of what the public heard or saw in media reports.
But the tide turned for the Masters family as their case against Offer Runnels was elevated to the grand jury in March 2015. Bryce lawyer's cited that the use of extreme force was unreasonable and the manner in which the officer dragged and dropped the teenager's body was a violation of his civil rights. As everything was recorded in the police car's dashboard camera, the officer pleads guilty for all of his actions, per Fox 4 KC.
With this case behind them, Bryce Masters can finally focus on his future. His parents released a statement after the sentencing of Officer Runnels was handed down. "Two law enforcement families were devastated by these events and we all simply wish that day had never happened," the statement read in the Fox report.
