ALABAMA – At the hospital in Tuscaloosa, Derek Stokes said doctors examined the bite from the police dog and discussed whether they would have to amputate his arm.
“I was like ‘amputation?’ I went from going to Walmart to amputation?”
“I was scared to let them amputate the arm,” he told. “The arm was the evidence. If they amputated my arm, not only would I be without an arm, but I wouldn’t have any evidence of what the police did to me.”
Doctors performed several surgeries, using tissue from Stokes’ belly to rebuild the chunk of flesh bitten out of his forearm. Stokes said he felt like a science experiment. Doctors sewed a flap of skin that connected his right arm to his side.
And he said he couldn’t move his left arm, either, because police shackled him to the hospital bed. Armed officers took turns and rotated in shifts, guarding Stokes, a suspected shoplifter, for three weeks.
The bite
Earlier that day, before the dog bite, Stokes browsed the aisles at the Walmart on Skyland Boulevard in Tuscaloosa.
He told he often made the hour drive from his home in Columbus, Miss. to Tuscaloosa so he could buy supplies in bulk from the nearest Sam’s Club. And while he was in town, he’d pick up a few things at Walmart or the mall.
Stokes said he paid for a phone card, snack packs of chips and a toy for his goddaughter, then headed for the exit.
A Walmart employee stopped Stokes and accused him of shoplifting a video projector, according to police, who say he hid the item in his overalls and pushed the employee. Stokes says he did not steal anything from the store and says he tried to show a receipt.
A Tuscaloosa police officer was already on the way to the store, where she worked off-duty, when a call came in about the alleged theft. In a statement to AL.com, the Tuscaloosa Police Department said the officer was trying to handcuff Stokes when he pulled away, shoved her and ran outside.
Stokes said he ran because he was frightened when the officer reached toward her gun belt.
The Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement to AL.com that a K-9 deputy heard a radio call that the city police officer “attempted to deploy her taser but that it was ineffective against the suspect.” City police told us Stokes was already running away and the Taser didn’t hit him.
Stokes sprinted behind the store, toward a drainage ditch at the bottom of a steep, grassy hill near the woods. He said he tripped and fell to the ground. Then he saw a Tuscaloosa County sheriff’s deputy several yards away with a large police dog.
“I was in the process of letting them handcuff me,” Stokes told. “I didn’t resist. I had submitted to them.”
Stokes said he watched in what seemed like slow motion as the dog charged down the grassy hill.
“It came so hard, so fast that the officers around me jumped back,” he said. “It hit me so hard, it knocked me back.”
The dog sunk his teeth into Stokes’ right arm — dragging, pulling, shaking him, tearing through flesh.
