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A second lieutenant in the U.S. Army is suing two Virginia police officers over a traffic stop last December where officers drew their guns, pointed them at him and referenced the Green Mile to suggest he was facing execution before pepper-spraying him and knocking him to the ground.
Body camera footage shows Caron Nazario, who is Black and Latino, was dressed in uniform with his hands held in the air outside the driver's side window of his new Chevy Tahoe as he told the armed officers: 'I'm honestly afraid to get out.
'Yeah, you should be!' one of the officers - Joe Gutierrez - responded during the stop at a BP gas station in Windsor, Virginia.
In a lawsuit filed earlier this month, Nazario says his constitutional rights were violated during the traffic stop. The two sides in the case dispute what happened after Gutierrez joined Windsor Police Officer Daniel Crocker in the stop.
At the time, Nazario was coming from his duty station at the U.S. Army Medical Corp and going home, attorney Jonathan Arthur said on Friday.
'He's a sworn member of the United States Army. He swears an oath to support to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic—and the way these officers behaved, this implicates the oath that he takes,' Arthur said in a statement to Vice.
Asked about Nazario's condition after the incident, Arthur said: 'He's definitely not doing too well.
Crocker radioed he was attempting to stop a vehicle with no rear license plate and tinted windows on U.S. Route 460. He said the driver was 'eluding police' and he considered it a 'high-risk traffic stop,' according to a report he submitted afterward and which was included in the court filing.
Arthur said Nazario explained at the time that he wasn't trying to elude the officer, but was trying to stop in a well-lit area 'for officer safety and out of respect for the officers.' The lawsuit states that it took roughly one minute and 40 seconds for Nazario to pull over after the officer initiated the stop.
Gutierrez was driving by when he heard Crocker's call, saw him attempting to stop the SUV and decided to join the traffic stop. Gutierrez acknowledged that Nazario's decision to drive to a lit area happens to him 'a lot, and 80% of the time, it's a minority,' Arthur said, quoting the officer.
The lawsuit says by the time the two officers reached Nazario's SUV, the license plate was visible in the rear.
Nazario drove his SUV to a well-lit gas station where, according to the lawsuit, the two officers got out and immediately drew their guns and pointed them at Nazario after they got out of their cars. The officers then attempted to pull Nazario out of the vehicle while he continued to keep his hands in the air. Gutierrez then stepped back and pepper-sprayed Nazario multiple times as officers yelled for him to get out of the car.
The lawsuit adds that Nazario's dog, which was inside a crate in the back of the SUV, started choking as a re
