HYATTSVILLE, Md. — Lawyers for a Prince George's County man are seeking witnesses or surveillance video after an encounter with an undercover police officer left 30-year-old Dioni Martinez with a badly broken jaw.
Martinez said a Prince George's County police detective attacked him without provocation. But the detective has a very different account, and police said they have an independent witness that confirms it.
It happened at a busy shopping plaza off University Boulevard on June 11.
Martinez said the detective aggressively confronted him for no reason, and then socked him in the jaw, breaking it in two places.
But in charging documents, the officer said he was sitting in his car when Martinez came up and tried the door handle.
He said he first snapped the locks shut, and then got out to confront Martinez. The officer said Martinez told him he didn't care if he was a cop, he was going to kill him. He said Martinez then stripped off his shirt, lifted his bike over his head, and swung it at the detective three times.
The cop said he knocked Martinez to the ground trying to defend himself.
"Of course he's lying," Martinez said. Of course, of course."
Pictures show the damage to Martinez's jaw. His lawyer said doctors had to wire his mouth closed.
Martinez was taken to the hospital for treatment and evaluation. The detective swore out a second-degree assault charge against him that was filed the next day.
"I never threatened him at all," Martinez said. "I didn't swing my bicycle at him. I had my hands up, looking for the camera, to see if someone was going to see him, because I felt threatened."
"We're looking for answers," Martinez's lawyer, Jonathan Carroll, said. "Something like this never should have happened. We're trying to figure out exactly why and we're trying to see if there are any witnesses or any camera footage to document what happened."
Police said they automatically start an internal affairs investigation in this kind of use of force incident. WUSA9 will update this story when we hear the results of the investigation.
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