Brianna Grier died following an “in-custody incident with Hancock County Sheriff’s Office deputies” on Thursday (July 21). The Georgia Bureau of Investigation released the body camera footage on Friday after they concluded the victim fell out of the patrol car because it wasn’t properly locked. Grier was in a coma for a few days after encountering the sheriff’s deputies. The incident began at Grier’s Sparta home after her family called for medical attention to assist with the 28-year-old’s schizophrenic episode. Family members and their attorney, civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, are demanding answers.
The GBI says the victim was handcuffed and placed in the car without a seat belt, as seen in the video below. The deputy is then seen stopping the vehicle and approaching Grier who is face-down in the grass and unresponsive. The second deputy, who rode in another vehicle, gets out of his car and assists with sitting Grier up, but she still didn’t respond. He’s heard asking, “How’d your back door open?” which is a question the family wants an answer to. Crump said, “Everybody knows that it is not supposed to be possible to open a police vehicle from the back seat, especially when a person is in handcuffs.” He continued, “Brianna’s family had faith in law enforcement to get her the help she needed, and now they are being forced to grieve her completely unnecessary death.”
The victim’s father, Marvin Grier, told The Daily Beast, “They told her they were going to detain her until the next morning when they would come up and do a 10-13 – that is to take her to a facility…to get someone to come get her from the police department to get her some help. But she never made it there.” The family told the outlet that they weren’t notified about Grier’s condition until the following day, and she was checked into the hospital under an alias.
Grier’s sister, Lottie, told the outlet her brother unsuccessfully attempted to visit her after learning she was hospitalized at Grady Memorial. She said, “They had already told him that she was there, but another nurse came in to say they weren’t supposed to know she was there because she was up on an alias.” Lottie continued, “They made it seem as if she was stable, but we just couldn’t see her.” But two days later, Grier’s family received a call saying she sustained multiple head injuries and died as a result. “They didn’t even have a contact for you know her family, next of kin or whatever, they said they had to look her up on Facebook,” she said.