Judging from the video, it’s hard to imagine a less threatening figure than David Levi Dehmann in his last moments. When Mount Vernon, Ohi...
Judging from the video, it’s hard to imagine a less threatening figure than David Levi Dehmann in his last moments. When Mount Vernon, Ohio, police first came into contact with him on April 21, Dehmann, was reportedly drunk, half-naked and lying on a stranger’s patio next to a pool of his own vomit. When cops arrested the 33-year-old a couple of hours later, he could barely stand. Knox County Sheriff’s deputies had to help Dehmann out of the car and into the local jail. His pants were falling down. Inside the jail, Dehmann smiled while speaking to deputies as they stripped him of his shoes and sunglasses. When an officer removed his handcuffs, Dehmann patted the deputy on the shoulder, then tried to hug him. Somehow, the shoe-less drunkard doling out hugs would suddenly become a threat in the eyes of his jailers, however. As deputies led Dehmann to his cell, a scuffle suddenly broke out. Dehmann tried to hit an officer in the face, “causing Deputy [Chase] Wright to place Mr. Dehmann into a takedown hold, taking him to the ground to get control of him.” “Once control was gained, it was found that Mr. Dehmann had hit his head on the floor during the incident,” deputies wrote in a report. Paramedics put a neck brace on Dehmann and sent him to a hospital on a stretcher. Dehmann would never get up. He died two days later. The bizarre in-custody death enraged Dehmann’s family and friends. “I want to know what happened when my boy’s head hit that concrete,” said his father, David A. Dehmann. “I want to know what happened.” Less
