SEATTLE — Snohomish County has agreed to pay $75,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a pandemic care worker who was tackled and arrested by a deputy while hurrying to catch a bus.
Sharon Wilson, a certified medical technician, was ending a 13-hour shift at an Everett health care facility and still dressed in hospital scrubs when Snohomish County sheriff’s Deputy Matthew Lease tackled her while she was running to catch a bus, according to the lawsuit.
Wilson said she was taken down hard to the pavement and looked up to find Lease on top of her, yelling at her for failing to obey his commands. The lawsuit says Wilson was wearing headphones and didn’t initially hear the deputy.
The lawsuit also alleges Lease didn’t have any reason to believe Wilson had committed a crime or have cause to use force to detain her.
Lease arrested Wilson on suspicion of obstructing an officer and resisting arrest, and he ordered her to be banned from the public transit system, which was her sole means of getting to her job, the lawsuit says.
The deputy also handcuffed and frisked Wilson, even though she had asked for a female deputy to conduct that task, according to the complaint.
Wilson alleges that while she was in handcuffs, she was struggling to breathe and asked Lease to retrieve an inhaler from her purse, but he refused. The lawsuit says another officer, identified as Edmonds police Officer Robert Pack, helped her with her medicine before Lease took her to jail.
The lawsuit alleges another deputy at the scene warned Lease the sheriff’s office had limited jail booking due to the spread of COVID-19 and that Lease should check with the jail before transporting Wilson.
Nonetheless, the lawsuit says, Wilson was booked into jail and spent 15 hours in custody.
During that time, the claim alleges Lease visited her and said the “entire experience was all ‘a misunderstanding’ and that he hopes she ‘learned’ from the incident.”
Wilson “was humiliated … embarrassed and demeaned” when Lease publicly frisked her, then she was forced to “sit in jail overnight, against a non-felony booking limitation and COVID-19 lockdown directive,” the lawsuit says. Wilson later “experienced more mental anguish and trauma when she learned she would be prosecuted for crimes she did not commit,” according to the claim.
Her misdemeanor resisting arrest charge and transit ban were eventually dropped, the lawsuit says.
