Boynton retiree sues over leg loss in robbery
Russell Cooper pulled a knife on a PNC employee over missing money, but police who arrested him ruined his health, suit says.
WEST PALM BEACH — When 77-year-old Boynton Beach resident Russell Cooper learned his bank account was empty, he got angry.
With an auto mechanic waiting for him to pay a $130 bill, Cooper pulled a pocket knife on a teller at a PNC Bank and demanded the money he needed to get his car out of the shop.
A video of the 2014 incident shows a bank manager calmly walking with Cooper as he pushes
his walker across the lobby of the Congress Avenue bank, briefly flashes the knife at the teller and shoves the bills in his pocket. The manager even holds the door open as Cooper leaves the bank, gripping his walker firmly.
But, according to a lawsuit filed this week in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, the response from Boynton Beach police who were summoned was far less friendly.
Instead of recognizing Cooper’s “obvious advanced age and physical disability,” three officers surrounded him and one shot him three times with a taser, causing the retiree to collapse on the ground, attor-
ney Craig Lawson wrote in the lawsuit he filed on Cooper’s behalf.
The shots caused a cascade of events that ultimately cost Cooper his leg, his hearing and his independence, Lawson claims.
“It’s kind of traumatic,” Lawson said on Tuesday. “He goes from independent living to a nursing home.”
Lawson claims the retired director of safety for the Michigan Department of Labor deserves to be compensated for the multiple events that could have easily been avoided.
Had Boynton police simply restrained Cooper, instead of shooting him with a taser, the cochlear implant Cooper relied on to be able to hear wouldn’t have been destroyed and his knee wouldn’t have been injured, Lawson said. Had officials at the sheriff ’s office better monitored his injuries during the two weeks he spent in jail, Cooper wouldn’t have gotten a staph infection, commonly known as MRSA, that ravaged his leg so severely that it had to be amputated from the hip down.
Instead, because Cooper couldn’t hear, jailers assumed he was mentally ill, Lawson said. They took away his walker and kept him in isolation, Lawson said.
Cooper, Lawson said, “was forced to crawl or pull his 77-year-old, disabled body across the jail cell floor to get to and from any meal, to use the toilet, to attempt to communicate, to attempt to sleep,” Lawson wrote in the lawsuit.
Boynton Beach and sheriff ’s officials declined to comment on the allegations.
Initially charged with robbery, kidnapping and aggravated assault, Cooper eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of assault.
He wasn’t in court in July 2015 when his defense attorney entered his guilty plea and a judge ordered him to pay $726, which included a $21 fine.
The irony is that Cooper appears to have been the victim of fraud, Lawson said. He had his retirement and Social Security checks automatically deposited in his PNC bank account. While Lawson said he hasn’t fully investigated what happened, it appears someone got access to Cooper’s account and drained it.
When told his account had been closed because there was no money in it, Cooper assumed the bank had ripped him off and lashed out, Lawson said.
Now 81, Cooper is confined to a nursing home, unable to walk. Lawson said he doesn’t know how much he will seek from the two agencies.
“I don’t know what we can get him for the loss of his independence and the loss of his leg,” Lawson said.