LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - A civil liberties organization has sued the city of Lincoln, police and Lancaster County on behalf of a woman whose nose was nearly severed when an officer shot her in the face with a rubber bullet during protests over racial injustice last year.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska said Tuesday in a news release that it is seeking an unspecified amount in damages for 19-year-old Elise Poole.
The lawsuit says Poole was kneeling on a sidewalk as part of a Lincoln demonstration the night of May 31 following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. The lawsuit says that when Poole got up to flee tear gas directed at protesters, she was shot in the face with a rubber bullet at close range by a police officer.
Poole reached up to feel her nearly-severed nose “hanging near her mouth,” the lawsuit says. Poole underwent emergency reconstructive surgery for her injury, with doctors determining the bone, cartilage and internal valve of her nose were destroyed by the impact of the rubber bullet. She likely faces more surgery, her attorneys said.
The lawsuit says police actions that night deprived Poole of her First Amendment right to assemble, protest and demonstrate peaceably.
Both Lincoln police and the Lancaster County sheriff’s office have said the use of force during the protests was justified, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.
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