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A man claims he was the victim of police brutality and excessive force. He has now filed a lawsuit against the deputy and the sheriff's office.
The case goes back to an incident last May in Millard County, and the entire event was recorded on the deputy's dash cam.
Ty Pikyavit was 19 years old at the time. He says a deputy should never treat someone the way a Millard County deputy treated him.
Pikyavit, the teenager seen in the video being handcuffed, admits he was drunk and doesn't remember what was happening. But after seeing what happened, he'll never forget.
"It's just something you can't believe until you see it, and I really couldn't believe it," he said.
Pikyavit was passed out on the side of a Fillmore Street last May when his girlfriend found him and started walking him home. A man picked them up to drive them but was pulled over by Millard County deputy Clete Carter, who ordered them out of the truck.
Even though Pikyavit said he couldn't stand, the deputy still wanted him to. That's when the alleged brutality happened.
Pikyavit said, "Well yeah, I could say I was angry about it, just how they treated me. It wasn't right at all."
Pikyavit and his attorney say what you see in the video is bad enough, but what really bothers them is what happened when paramedics and other deputies arrived. They say Carter lied about what exactly happened.
On the video, Carter said, "Get him cuffed, and he starts turning around, can't even stand up. I'm trying to lean him over the truck, comes back at me, and falls down on the freaking ground."
But then he told paramedics and another deputy a different story. "Then he starts pulling and I'm pushing him against the truck, pushing him against the truck. He's going like this and kept coming back, so I went to pull him down, and he went down and hit his head," Carter said.
Pikyavit's attorney, Robert Sykes, says paramedics should have known the real story of how Pikyavit was hurt.
"They need to know to treat somebody. They come and find somebody on the ground unconscious and bleeding from their mouth. They don't know what happened," Sykes said.
Pikyavit's girlfriend, Stephanie Decker, was there and says that story isn't true. She said, "It's kind of disturbing to hear him lying about stuff."
"I wasn't resisting. I wasn't a threat. I wasn't doing nobody any harm or anything," Pikyavit said.
We contacted Millard County Sheriff Robert Dekker and Chief Deputy Attorney Patrick Finlinson. They both said the case was still being looked at, and they couldn't comment today.
Pikyavit has about $5,000 in hospital bills and says he still has head, neck and back trouble.
E-mail: acabrero@ksl.com
