A Florida man filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against three Jacksonville sheriff’s deputies who brutally beat him last year after he fled a traffic stop, alleging they used excessive force that caused permanent injuries to his head, one eye and a kidney.

Le’Keian Woods, who said he still suffers from migraines and eye pain, is suing Jacksonville officers Hunter Sullivan, Trey McCullough and former officer Josue Garriga for their role in the Sept. 29, 2023, beating that drew attention. national and local protests due to its severity. Sheriff TK Waters has defended the beating as justified.

The beating left Woods with a ruptured kidney, a swollen face and a bloody lip. A fourth officer, Beau Daigle, is being sued for pointing his gun at Woods, who is seeking unspecified damages.

Attorneys Harry Daniels and Norman Harris accused the officers of targeting Woods, 25, and the two friends he was with because they are black. They said officers used the fact that the driver was not wearing a seat belt as a pretext to stop his truck at gunpoint after Garriga claimed he had seen Woods sell cocaine to a man at a gas station. The cocaine charge was later dropped.

“This is a clear case of miscarriage of justice and racial discrimination,” Harris said. “This is not a case where authorities saw young men with warrants for accusations of violent crimes. “This is a case where a stop was fabricated based on a seat belt violation and officers came out with guns drawn.”

While his two friends complied with the officers’ demands to remain in the van with their hands visible, Woods ran away.

“I got a little scared that he was going to shoot me, that I had a serious situation, so I ran,” said Woods, who was on probation for robbery.

Body camera video shows Sullivan chasing Woods, yelling that he would shoot him with his Taser if he didn’t stop. When Sullivan got close enough, he shot Woods twice with the stun gun and Woods fell flat on his face. Sullivan, Garriga and McCullough punched, elbowed and kneed him in the head and body while attempting to handcuff him.

Woods, who is 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighs 160 pounds (1.7 meters, 72 kilograms), would squirm and sometimes put one hand or the other behind his back, but then move the other under him. The older officers said they feared he was reaching for a weapon. It took them two minutes to handcuff Woods.

Daniels, a former police officer, said that in Florida, kneeing a suspect in the head is considered deadly force, the legal equivalent of shooting someone. It should only be used if a life is in danger. He said federal and state lawsuits will be filed later against the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office declined to comment Thursday and the Jacksonville Fraternal Order of Police, the officers’ union, did not return a call seeking comment.

At a news conference three days after Woods’ arrest, Sheriff Waters, who is black, said body camera videos showed the beating was necessary to prevent Woods from hurting officers.

“Just because the force is ugly doesn’t mean it’s illegal,” Waters said then. He said no officers would be disciplined.

The U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division cleared the officers, saying their actions “did not rise” to a level at which they could be prosecuted under federal law. Daniels said the department did not do an adequate investigation and the decision will be appealed.

Woods was originally charged with resisting arrest with violence, armed trafficking in cocaine and methamphetamine and other felonies.

But in April, six months after his arrest, prosecutors dropped those charges. He pleaded guilty to resisting arrest without violence for fleeing the truck and was sentenced to nine days in jail, which he had already served. Garriga had not recorded Woods’ alleged sale with his video cameras and no other officers saw it.

“Running away from the truck is the only crime he committed that day,” Nicole Jamieson, Woods’ criminal defense attorney, said in a phone interview Thursday. Just because officers were yelling at Woods to stop resisting arrest as they beat him doesn’t mean he actually was, he said.

Garriga, 34, could not testify against Woods because he pleaded guilty earlier this year to federal charges that he had sexual relations with a 17-year-old girl. He will receive a sentence of between 10 years and life in prison at a hearing scheduled for November 18.

In 2019, Garriga shot and killed a man during a traffic stop for having his seat belt unbuckled. Prosecutors found the shooting was justified and a lawsuit filed by the dead man’s family was later settled for an undisclosed amount. Daniels was the family’s attorney.

Sullivan and his father, who is also a Jacksonville sheriff’s deputy, were suspended in 2020 after getting into an off-duty fight with a woman at a bar. No criminal charges were filed.

At the time of the beating, Woods was on probation after pleading no contest to a robbery in Tallahassee in 2017, in which he and his roommate attempted to attack an illegal marijuana dealer at gunpoint.

The dealer pulled out his own gun and fatally shot the roommate as Woods fled. Woods was originally charged with second-degree murder in the death of his roommate, but a plea deal was reached in 2022 that freed him without prison time.

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