New York Daily News

Say 16-yr.-old has face marred,

- BY MICHAEL GARTLAND

A Bronx middle school student on the sidelines of a chaotic George Floyd protest was tasered, bruised and blooded during his arrest on Fordham Rd. — and afterward, hauled away to a hospital without his mother ever being contacted, the teen’s family charges.

The family of Jahmel Leach, 16, wants answers and accountabi­lity.

“If she was responsibl­e for the way her son looked, she would be in jail. If she was responsibl­e for the way her son was handled, she would be in jail,” the teen’s cousin, Yamil Miller, said of the boy’s mother, Daisy Acevedo.

“It’s just sad. It’s just really, really sad.”

“The kid’s never been arrested,” Miller said.

According to Miller, teenager Jahmel was walking in the street on June 1 — as several businesses were being targeted by looters and arson — carrying a stick when police tased him three times and then brought him to St. Barnabas Hospital.

Miller says his cousin insists he wasn’t taking part in the police brutality protest, only watching. Yet police charged him with 5th degree arson, a misdemeano­r, which Miller said Leach denies.

The same night, a looting and arson spree also erupted in Manhattan after protests.

Miller is furious police didn’t notify the family as they’re required to do when a minor is arrested. The family first learned about what happened through a phone call from the hospital.

When Acevedo arrived at St. Barnabas the same night, she found her son in a hospital bed with his face swollen and covered in blood. The horrified mom took photos of her son, but police quickly locked her out of the room, Miller alleged.

Miller charges authoritie­s also refused to let the teen put his clothes back on before he was discharged from the hospital, forcing him to go home in a hospital gown and no shoes — his backside exposed and his feet bare.

“[An officer] beat him. He exploited him. And he handed him over to the mother in an exploitati­ve manner,” Miller aflleged.

Miller said he later followed up with a sergeant at the precinct who contended that Leach was not “naked” when police sent him home.

“If you don’t think that’s a violation then you shouldn’t be in your job,” he said.

Last Thursday in Brooklyn, Leach and Miller confronted Mayor de Blasio at a

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