George Henderson, a 61-year-old Black man with Alzheimer’s disease, disappeared from his Tennessee home early last month, prompting local police to issue a Silver Alert for the man who spent almost three decades in the U.S. Army where he served in six overseas deployments, receiving head injuries and PTSD as a result.
The retired master sergeant ended up beaten unconscious by a Kentucky cop who accused him of being under the influence of cocaine and arrested him on five criminal charges that remain pending despite a lack of evidence to support those charges.
Guthrie police said they were only acting on their “training and departmental policy” when they punched the elderly man, who expressed confusion and incoherence but not violence or aggression to the cop, according to body camera footage.
Footage from Jacob Pritchett’s body camera also shows the cop accusing Henderson of having “very, very, very tiny, pinpointed” eyes before accusing him of having cocaine in his nose.
But cocaine is known for causing eyes to become dilated, according to a “fact sheet” prepared by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the complete opposite of pinpointed eyes, an important detail which evidently was not part of Pritchett’s training.