City attempts to dismiss latest filing in suit surrounding officer allegedly turning off body cam during airport arrest suing excessive force: Docs
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — The couple at the center of a lawsuit arguing a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officer used unjustified, excessive force during an airport arrest opposed the city's motion to dismiss the latest filing in the case.
The suit against Lowery and the city is based on the Second Amended Complaint (SAC) stemming from the March 2020 arrest of Michael Kernea at the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. He was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting a public officer, but court documents show the legal team serving Kernea and his wife Christy argue that CMPD Officer Lee Lowery had turned off his bodycam during the incident.
Judge progresses CTE lawsuit in case of ex-NFL player accused of killing 6 in Rock Hill
The case is being handled in the Western District Court of North Carolina in Charlotte.
Durham-based attorney Nichad Davis claims that not only did Lowery use excessive force but criminal charging documents indicate Lowery presented false statements to the Mecklenburg County magistrate, attempting to cover his 'malicious and brutal acts against Mr. Kernea, believing that there would be no other evidence to demonstrate his blatant reckless actions.'
However, the airport's video surveillance was captured showing an alleged 'malicious cover-up' by Lowery.
Court documents demonstrate that the night of the arrest, Lowery reportedly observed Kernea sitting on a stool near the 1897 Market, and accused him of not returning the stool to its correct position. Kernea told Lowery it was not his responsibility to move the stool to its proper location.
The legal team claims Lowery was allegedly being aggressive, yelling at Kernea's face to move the stool, and eventually punching him in the face. The officer then grabbed Kernea by the waist, lifted him into the air, and slammed him to the ground, crushing his shoulder, face, and upper extremities to the concrete floor.
Lowery then proceeded to arrest Kernea, causing him to plead to loosen the handcuffs since he allegedly experienced his circulation being cut off.
Court documents say Christy Kernea witnessed the incident and has suffered severe emotional distress after witnessing the alleged attack and violent arrest.
Between April and June 2020, following an investigation of the incident and subsequent discovery of Lowery's conduct that was caught on surveillance, the criminal charges against Kernea were all dismissed by the Mecklenburg County district attorney.
Mecklenburg County promotes from within for new county manager to replace Diorio
In a May 2020 report, CMPD's Internal Affairs Bureau concluded that the use of force upon Kernea was not justified.
On Monday, the Charlotte City Attorney's office claimed their motion to dismiss should be granted. Officials say that years into this litigation, the plaintiffs allegedly rewrote their entire complaint over the city's objection, only after having sought permission from the court to add allegations about emotional distress.
'Even if any of Plaintiffs' claims would have otherwise survived, the court would be justified in striking the (SAC) for failing to comply with its previous order,' it reads.
A week before, the Kerneas' legal team says the city's motion to dismiss should be denied, citing Fourth Amendment and North Carolina law. Further, they argue that the claims against Lowery in his official capacity are not duplicative and establish causes of action against Lowery and the city — who has waived immunity from the suit.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Washington Post
2 hours ago
- Washington Post
Former NFL player Kelvin Joseph facing charges after crash that killed motorcyclist
DALLAS — Former NFL player Kelvin Joseph is facing charges for his involvement in a crash that killed a female motorcyclist on a Dallas-area freeway, The Dallas Morning News reported. Police in the Dallas suburb of Richardson said on social media that Joseph, who has been playing in the United Football League this spring, called police in Plano, another Dallas suburb, to report his involvement in the predawn crash Saturday. The 25-year-old Joseph, who was driving a BMW, was arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated, a misdemeanor, and collision involving personal injury or death, a second-degree felony. Police said 27-year-old Cody Morris of Plano was killed in the crash. Joseph was drafted by the Cowboys in 2021 and spent two seasons with them before he was traded to Miami. He also played briefly for Seattle and Indianapolis. The cornerback has been playing for the DC Defenders, who were set to play in a UFL conference championship game Sunday. The UFL said in a statement sent to Dallas TV station WFAA that it was aware of Joseph's arrest, but declined further comment. During the 2022 offseason with the Cowboys, Joseph was the passenger in an SUV from which two people fired shots into a group of men in Dallas, fatally striking one of the men in the head. Police concluded Joseph wasn't the shooter, and the NFL didn't suspend him. An attorney who previously represented Joseph didn't return a phone call from The Dallas Morning News. It wasn't immediately clear whether Joseph had an attorney following his arrest Saturday. ___ AP NFL:
3 hours ago
South Dakota is on track to spend $2 billion on prisons in the next decade
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. -- Two years after approving a tough-on-crime sentencing law, South Dakota is scrambling to deal with the price tag for that legislation: Housing thousands of additional inmates could require up to $2 billion to build new prisons in the next decade. That's a lot of money for a state with one of the lowest populations in the U.S., but a consultant said it's needed to keep pace with an anticipated 34% surge of new inmates in the next decade as a result of South Dakota's tough criminal justice laws. And while officials are grumbling about the cost, they don't seem concerned with the laws that are driving the need even as national crime rates are dropping. 'Crime has been falling everywhere in the country, with historic drops in crime in the last year or two,' said Bob Libal, senior campaign strategist at the criminal justice nonprofit The Sentencing Project. 'It's a particularly unusual time to be investing $2 billion in prisons.' Some Democratic-led states have worked to close prisons and enact changes to lower inmate populations, but that's a tough sell in Republican-majority states such as South Dakota that believe in a tough-on-crime approach, even if that leads to more inmates. For now, state lawmakers have set aside a $600 million fund to replace the overcrowded 144-year-old South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, making it one of the most expensive taxpayer-funded projects in South Dakota history. But South Dakota will likely need more prisons. Phoenix-based Arrington Watkins Architects, which the state hired as a consultant, has said South Dakota will need 3,300 additional beds in coming years, bringing the cost to $2 billion. Driving up costs is the need for facilities with different security levels to accommodate the inmate population. Concerns about South Dakota's prisons first arose four years ago, when the state was flush with COVID-19 relief funds. Lawmakers wanted to replace the penitentiary, but they couldn't agree on where to put the prison and how big it should be. A task force of state lawmakers assembled by Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden is expected to decide that in a plan for prison facilities this July. Many lawmakers have questioned the proposed cost, but few have called for criminal justice changes that would make such a large prison unnecessary. 'One thing I'm trying to do as the chairman of this task force is keep us very focused on our mission,' said Lieutenant Gov. Tony Venhuizen. 'There are people who want to talk about policies in the prisons or the administration or the criminal justice system more broadly, and that would be a much larger project than the fairly narrow scope that we have.' South Dakota's incarceration rate of 370 per 100,000 people is an outlier in the Upper Midwest. Neighbors Minnesota and North Dakota have rates of under 250 per 100,000 people, according to the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice advocacy nonprofit. Nearly half of South Dakota's projected inmate population growth can be attributed to a law approved in 2023 that requires some violent offenders to serve the full-length of their sentences before parole, according to a report by Arrington Watkins. When South Dakota inmates are paroled, about 40% are ordered to return to prison, the majority of those due to technical violations such as failing a drug test or missing a meeting with a parole officer. Those returning inmates made up nearly half of prison admissions in 2024. Sioux Falls criminal justice attorney Ryan Kolbeck blamed the high number of parolees returning in part on the lack of services in prison for people with drug addictions. 'People are being sent to the penitentiary but there's no programs there for them. There's no way it's going to help them become better people,' he said. 'Essentially we're going to put them out there and house them for a little bit, leave them on parole and expect them to do well.' South Dakota also has the second-greatest disparity of Native Americans in its prisons. While Native Americans make up one-tenth of South Dakota's population, they make up 35% of those in state prisons, according to Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit public policy group. Though legislators in the state capital, Pierre, have been talking about prison overcrowding for years, they're reluctant to dial back on tough-on-crime laws. For example, it took repeated efforts over six years before South Dakota reduced a controlled substance ingestion law to a misdemeanor from a felony for the first offense, aligning with all other states. 'It was a huge, Herculean task to get ingestion to be a misdemeanor,' Kolbeck said. Former penitentiary warden Darin Young said the state needs to upgrade its prisons, but he also thinks it should spend up to $300 million on addiction and mental illness treatment. 'Until we fix the reasons why people come to prison and address that issue, the numbers are not going to stop,' he said. Without policy changes, the new prisons are sure to fill up, criminal justice experts agreed. 'We might be good for a few years, now that we've got more capacity, but in a couple years it'll be full again,' Kolbeck said. 'Under our policies, you're going to reach capacity again soon.'
3 hours ago
Former NFL player Kelvin Joseph facing charges after crash that killed motorcyclist
DALLAS -- Former NFL player Kelvin Joseph is facing charges for his involvement in a crash that killed a female motorcyclist on a Dallas-area freeway, The Dallas Morning News reported. Police in the Dallas suburb of Richardson said on social media that Joseph, who has been playing in the United Football League this spring, called police in Plano, another Dallas suburb, to report his involvement in the predawn crash Saturday. The 25-year-old Joseph, who was driving a BMW, was arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated, a misdemeanor, and collision involving personal injury or death, a second-degree felony. Police said 27-year-old Cody Morris of Plano was killed in the crash. Joseph was drafted by the Cowboys in 2021 and spent two seasons with them before he was traded to Miami. He also played briefly for Seattle and Indianapolis. The cornerback has been playing for the DC Defenders, who were set to play in a UFL conference championship game Sunday. The UFL said in a statement sent to Dallas TV station WFAA that it was aware of Joseph's arrest but declined further comment. During the 2022 offseason with the Cowboys, Joseph was the passenger in an SUV from which two people fired shots into a group of men in Dallas, fatally striking one of the men in the head. Police concluded Joseph wasn't the shooter, and the NFL didn't suspend him. An attorney who previously represented Joseph didn't return a phone call from The Dallas Morning News. It wasn't immediately clear whether Joseph had an attorney following his arrest Saturday.
