net127

This bartender, who prefers not to be identified, was hit by a Taser shot after she yelled at officers for not arresting a customer who had thrown a drink in her face.

The deputies repeatedly told the bartender to calm down and lower her voice. She didn’t. Standing outside the club, she continued yelling at them.

One standing several feet away hit her with his Taser. One prong lodged in her left breast. The other went into her abdomen. She fell to the sidewalk, flailing.

“I thought he had shot me with a gun. I actually looked down to see if there was blood,” she said, calling the pain indescribable.

Bartender says she’s ‘just so scarred’ after Taser incident

Dani Davies, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer, reports:

As the music thumped at Club Prestige one night in September, a man stepped from the crowd and asked the bartender for a cup of water.

It’ll cost $2, she told him. Irked by the charge, he flung the water in her face.

And the bartender’s life hasn’t been the same since.

She wishes she hadn’t reacted the way she did, wishes she had ignored the insult, wishes she had wiped her face and gone home.

But she didn’t, and has the scars and debt to show for it.

According to the bartender, a 27-year-old mother who requested anonymity, here is what happened:

She told her fianc, who was also in the club, about the man who splashed her. He confronted the man. Fearing a fight, she ran for help.

“I made the fateful mistake of going outside to get the police,” she said.

Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies, who were working off-duty security details at the Lantana-area club, which is now closed, told the man who threw the water to leave. The bartender and her fianc got irate. How can you let him go, they yelled.

The deputies repeatedly told the bartender to calm down and lower her voice. She didn’t. Standing outside the club, she continued yelling at them.

One standing several feet away hit her with his Taser. One prong lodged in her left breast. The other went into her abdomen. She fell to the sidewalk, flailing.

“I thought he had shot me with a gun. I actually looked down to see if there was blood,” she said, calling the pain indescribable.

The deputy put her in handcuffs, charged her with battery on a law enforcement officer and took her to jail, where she spent the night. In his report, he wrote that the woman “charged me, punching me on my right bicept (sic) and forearm.” He wrote that he pushed her away but she approached him “violently when I tased her with 2 five second burst (sic).”

She says she never got close enough to touch him.

“I was furious but not so out of my mind that I would hit an officer. That would be ridiculous,” she said. “You would have to be really stupid to strike an officer.”

She hired a lawyer and refused to plead guilty to the charge, which eventually was dropped. She paid the lawyer an extra $3,000 to make sure her record is cleared. Her fianc also was charged, though he wasn’t jailed and was able to go home from the club that night to care for the couple’s toddler.

The bartender still has $10,000 in legal bills. She has kept the incident a secret from her parents as well as her employer, a large hotel where she has worked for eight years training other employees. Tears well in her eyes as she talks about that night.

“I have the scars on my body, the scars on my mind, and the scars on my heart,” she says. “I am just so scarred.”

Copyright © 2005, The Palm Beach Post. All rights reserved.