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| Woman sues LaSalle County over strip-search |
| By chicagotribune.com - David Heinzmann and Juan Perez Jr. |
| Published: 10/01/2013 |
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Dana Holmes was drunk, naked and being recorded on video. The 33-year-old was facedown on the floor of a LaSalle County jail cell while cameras captured images of her nude body on the facility's video system. Minutes earlier, four deputies — three men and a woman — had pulled her to the ground and carried her into the cell, where they quickly and forcibly stripped Holmes and walked out with her clothes. "There was no excuse or anything to give them a reason to put their hands on me," said Holmes, who filed a federal lawsuit against LaSalle County authorities Monday. "I was just scared. I didn't want them to have any reason to come back inside." Holmes, whose blood-alcohol level registered nearly three times the legal limit when she was arrested for drunken driving earlier in the night, said she lay on the floor crying. After a few minutes, the cell door opened, and a deputy tossed in a pile of blankets and what authorities describe as a "padded suit." More than an hour later, when deputies fingerprinted and photographed Holmes, she was covered only in one of the blankets wrapped around her body, the jail video showed. It was provided to the Tribune by Holmes' attorneys. The images show several male officers entering the room as a still-inebriated Holmes struggles to keep the blanket around her shoulders while being fingerprinted. Holmes, who lives in Coal City and works at a local convenience store, alleges the LaSalle County sheriff's department and four deputies violated her civil rights after her May arrest and caused her emotional harm by stripping her naked without legal justification for such a search. Her lawyer, Terry Ekl, said he planned to seek a meeting with the LaSalle County state's attorney to contend the officers committed official misconduct by deliberately strip-searching Holmes without justification. Read More. |
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