In a video posted 6 days ago to Americateve, a Hispanic man is arrested in a grocery store by a police officer. Despite his wife and young child pleading for help, the aggression does not desist and the man begins bleeding and leaves the scene handcuffed.

While protests against police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement are growing more and more popular across the United States and around the world, there are still numerous cases of it around the country, provoking mass outrage from social media.

A video was posted to social media showing a man being arrested by an off-duty police officer in a Walmart in Jacksonville, Florida. Neither the man nor his wife spoke English. The man has been identified as 43-year-old Yoel Rodriguez.

At the beginning of the video there are three people visible, Yoel Rodriguez, the police officer, and the man’s wife. The officer and Rodriguez seem to be arguing (the conversation itself wasn’t distinguishable and the situation escalates, with the officer grabbing his arm in an apparent attempt to detain him, and Rodriguez pushing the officer’s arm away. Next, you can see the officer pushing Rodriguez to the ground and striking him twice, before he tries to escape the officer’s punches.

He manages to move away for a split second before they both end up on the ground, with the wife intervening and attempting to lift the officer’s arm from around the man’s neck. During all of this, the couple’s small child is following the mother, crying. The officer ends up on top of the man while the woman cries out.

Rodriguez is pushed to the ground several times and he touches his face a few times, which is bleeding from the nose and several wounds. The wife pleads with the officer and those who were witnessing the event, however she apparently did not speak English.

After many people repeatedly tell Rodriguez’s wife to move her baby stroller, a woman watching and filming the situation moves it in order to remove the baby from the dangerous situation.

Rodriguez’s wife begins hyperventilating, and the same woman from before asks her if there is anyone in their family they can call to help, to which the woman responds with “Speak Spanish, speak Spanish!” Showing that she did not speak English.

Luckily, a man also at the scene spoke Spanish and had the woman exhaling what had led up to the arrest.

The woman responded:
”…Iban a cerrar y estábamos cogiendo mandarinas y mi esposo le dijo al señor que ya íbamos a pagar. ¡Nos sacó de allá! Y mi esposo le decía—“

Translation:

“…They were going to close and we were grabbing tangerines and my husband told the man that we were just about to pay. He took us out of there! And my husband was telling him—“

She cut off mid sentence as she returned to the officer and her husband asking for the officer to be less aggressive. The officer seems to pay attention to the woman and stops using as much force as before.

Yoel’s nephew, David Rodriguez, has confirmed that his aunt and uncle in the video to not speak English, definitely playing a role in the escalation of things

“They told me that the officer asked Yoel to leave but Yoel didn’t understand what was going on and he was just shopping. Honestly, I don’t understand why the officer did what he did.”

David Rodriguez

A witness has said that Walmart employees called for police to ask Yoel to leave when the store was closing, a move she deems as “an overreaction.”

Rodriguez has two black eyes in his mug photo and has stated (through an interpreter) that he also has a broken nose. He was ordered held on a $7,500 bond Monday morning. The officer involved has no injuries.

According to as local search of local court records, Rodriguez does not have any prior arrests in Duval County is Jacksonville, Florida.

A similar case emerged in these days with the shooting of Andrés Guardado, a 18-year-old security guard and student who was shot in the back after becoming frightened from officers’ weapons. The security camera that caught the incident on tape was destroyed afterwards.

Protests against police brutality are continuing across the United States and around the world, demanding justice for dozens of victims in the past few years.

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Link to video:

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CBjPjUpgB5g/?igshid=12zybmme30z1k

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Sources: