Omaha, NE - Deputies responding to a potential burglary end up tazing a guy locked out if his house. Bad luck got worse when a judge threw the same man jail.
Shawn Manrose admits in court he was drunk last April when a neighbor called 9-1-1 after seeing him locked out trying to break into the front door of his house. When deputies arrived, his belligerence according prosecutors, ended up get him tazed and charged with obstruction of justice and resisting arrest.
"When I turned around they had their guns pointed at me and they zapped me. They tazered me," says Shawn Manrose.
Shawn Manrose says while he yelled profanity at the deputies, ignored their orders by refusing to put his hands up keeping them in his pockets, he didn't break any laws or provoke the use of a tazer.
"There's 50 thousand volts going through somebody's body just because they won't take their hands out of their pockets that's nonsense," says his attorney James Martin Davis.
"Think of the alternatives, physical fighting, night sticks, even lethal force. Those are kind of things police officers try to avoid. This gives them a tool inbetween there that allows them to immobilize a person without causing an injury," says City Prosecutor Marty Conboy.
Prosecutors argued that actions by Manrose left the deputies with no other choice. But Manrose says he told deputies that he wasn't a burglar and that he lived at the house.
"Unfortunately this young man, at his own house, if you look at it objectively, could have avoided a lot of this problem by complying with some simple requests of the officers," says Conboy.
In court the problem turned into a guilty verdict with a seven day jail sentence. Manrose appealed the judge's decision. Manrose bailed out of jail and will serve his sentence pending the outcome of that appeal.
