RINGGOLD, Ga. (WDEF)- An arrest in Ringgold of an undocumented immigrant and an activist has gone viral.
Elizabeth Haley says she was with her friend Jade Michalski last Monday when they noticed a man being arrested on Depot Street.
That led to a chaotic scene where the Georgia State Patrol say 37 year old Obrey Jimenez was pulled over after running a stop sign.
He was then arrested by a Georgia State Trooper and placed into his vehicle, and he was charged for never having a license among other violations, and had a federal warrant.
The protests from nearby onlookers began over concerns of Jimenez’s medical condition, which were all captured on Facebook Live by Elizabeth Haley.
Haley said, “To our understanding, he went to go get papers, and he was yanked out of his vehicle, threw him on the ground, and arrested him. He obtained a significant amount of injuries in that process and needed an ambulance, but did not receive EMT care.”
It then escalated when Michalski was arrested herself on charges of obstructing officers among other charges, and carried into a Ringgold police car.
Haley believes this arrest was unjust.
She said, “The officer that I feel needs to be particularly reviewed and looked at is the officer that took his hand and put it between the thighs of her legs, up the back of her body, and around the front of her body to lift her. That is problematic. There is no reason we should have a male officer putting his hands on the private parts of a female person.”
Both were booked into the Catoosa County Jail.
The Catoosa County Sheriff’s Office says that Jimenez was released into ICE custody as of Thursday, which raised other concerns for the crowd of onlookers.
Haley said, “Not in our town, not in our area, not in Ringgold, Georgia. We are not letting the state come in and abduct unharmful brown people.
The Ringgold Police Department is not commenting on the nature of the arrest at this time.
