Date of Offense
Offense(s)
Statement
This Incident Alleges:
Abuse of Authority
By illegally detainment and use of force
Use of Force
By tasing him six times and causing immense pain, when they had no legal authority to use any force
Unlawful Detention
By criminalizing a medical distress
Summary of the Incident
On January 16, 2021 a Burger King employee called 911 to request medical assistance for a man in the drive thru who was unconscious in his car. The employee told police “I had to jump in the car and turn it off”. The vehicle had just been involved in an accident in the drive thru.
Officer Edward Urena’s Body Worn Camera (BWC) shows him approaching a vehicle in which the driver, later identified as 45-year-old Truman McCollum Jr., was being treated by Killeen Fire Department EMTs. Mr. McCollum appears unresponsive to the questions from an EMT. The BWC then shows the Mr. McCollum being assisted from the vehicle and onto a stretcher. Mr. McCollum appears to be regaining consciousness as he is transported to the ambulance.
Officer Urena writes down information about Mr. McCollum’s vehicle and walks to the other vehicle involved in drive in order to write a crass report.
At 17:12:19 of Urena’s BWC he responds to a disturbance in the ambulance. Officer Urena’s BWC then shows another officer and EMTs struggling with Mr. McCollum.
Another officer can be heard saying, "Get your taser! Get your taser!” Mr. McCollum was then repeatedly tased.
17:16:50 of Urena’s BWC, Mr McCollum appears to have been removed from the ambulance
17:18:37 can be seen being put in the back seat of a police vehicle
17:22:55 Officer Urena can be heard saying, “Apparently I tased Melendez like six times.”
17:23:57 Officer Eurea joins Office Plowick and Seargent A. Mathews and begin discussing how they will charge Mr. McCollum.
17:24:42 Officer Eurena suggested charging Mr. McCollum "with resisting arrest.'
17:24:56 But Officer Plowick disagreed. “The only issue I see with charging him with resisting is he was [inaudible] enough to understand you’re the police.”
17:25:42] “Suspicion of this is DWI,” Officer Plowick said.
17:25:04] Sgt. Mathews can then be heard asking, “What criminal offense do we have to arrest him because obviously, he’s already gone,” she said in the body cam footage. “So, what criminal offense do we have? We came out here for an accident, correct? We find out there is a man possibly seizing but we’re not sure.”
17:27:22] “Offense is going to be DWI.”
Federal Lawsuit filed
McCollum, Jr. v. City of Killeen et al
On January 13, 2023, Truman McCollum, Jr., filed a civil rights lawsuit against the City Of Killeen, Texas; Edward Urena; Franklin Melendez; and Joshua Plowick, seeking damages for alleged violation of his constitutional rights. This case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, with Judges Alan D. Albright and Jeffrey C. Manske presiding.
The lawsuit alleges: “CITY OF KILLEEN, TEXAS officers Edward Urena, Franklin Melendez, and Joshua Plowick used excessive force against Truman McCollum, Jr., in violation of his individual rights under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution when they illegally detained him on January 16, 2021, tasing him six (6) times and causing immense pain, when they had no legal authority to use any force whatsoever. In the alternative, Defendants also violated Mr. McCollum’s Fourth Amendment right to be free in his person/bodily integrity from unlawful intrusion and seizures of his person when repeatedly tasing him as their means to force medical treatment upon him to which he could not consent, comply, make informed decisions, remain still, or follow their instructions due to the severity of his medical condition and prolonged repeat tasing, actually escalating Mr. McCollum’s confusion and resulting medical combativeness.”
The lawsuit alleges: “This violence was caused by CITY OF KILLEEN, TEXAS policies, customs, or practices with respect to the use of force on unarmed suspects and failure to train officers on the signs, symptoms, and recovery of and from seizures, with particular focus on the postictal state experienced by one who has just endured a seizure. Mr. McCollum’s injuries resulted directly and only from this clearly excessive use of force; and the excessiveness of that force was clearly unreasonable. The actions alleged herein are of such a nature as to shock the conscience and are cruel and unusual in their oppressiveness.”
The lawsuit alleges: “Accordingly, Defendants Melendez, Plowick, and Urena had no reasonable suspicion to detain Mr. McCollum for any crime or probable cause to arrest Mr. McCollum for Resisting Arrest because they were not attempting to arrest, search, or transport Mr. McCollum when they initially made contact with him in the ambulance. They also had no reasonable suspicion that he had committed this crime, as no such prior attempted detention or arrest had occurred.”
The Killeen Daily News reported that, “Officer Edward [U]rena has since joined the Overton Police Department in East Texas.”
The US Citizen Reporters are a group of public and private defense advocates that scour the internet for documented incidents of police misconduct that have eluded accountability.
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