SEYMOUR, Ind. (WHAS11) – A man from Seymour spent a week in the hospital after he says a police officer beat him in front of his own home. Seymour police say the man was resisting arrest.
Robert Edmonds says last Monday he dropped his car off at his friend’s house to get the brakes fixed. Edmonds says he only lived a couple blocks away so he walked home. He says a Seymour Police officer approached him only feet from his front porch.
“I said, ‘I am a diabetic and I get colds easy; can we step on the porch and talk?’ He stood there, I turned like this to walk to the porch he grabbed me and started pounding my face off the car. He got me on the ground and started pounding my face on the ground,” says Edmonds.
Edmonds says his 120 pound frame was no match for the officer. Edmonds says other officers showed up and he was handcuffed.
Seymour Police tell a different story in the police reports from that night. An officer claims Edmonds ran a stop sign and sped off. The officer says he caught up with Edmonds and says Edmonds had parked his car and was walking toward his house. The officer says Edmonds resisted arrest and that is when a fight between the two started.
The 63-year-old spent a week in an Indianapolis hospital. Edmonds' eye is so damaged that his wife Nancy will soon take him back to the hospital so doctors can remove his right eye.
There will be a public meeting Wednesday night at Bethel AME Church in Seymour. The police chief and Mayor are expected to attend. The police chief would go on camera Monday but says he will address the public at the public meeting.
