Wounded Man Says DHS Tried|To Cover Up Unprovoked Shooting

LOS ANGELES (CN) - A Jamaican immigrant says Department of Homeland Security officers shot him in the scrotum for no reason, then tried to deport him to cover up the shooting.

Dwane Sutherland, now of San Diego, says he was helping a friend move when they noticed "a suspicious, late-model black car circle the area several times and then park" near his friend's house. In his federal claim, Sutherland says the three male passengers ducked down to hide as Sutherland and his friend approached the car. Sutherland says his friend asked the men if he could help them, and they said they were waiting for someone. Then, Sutherland says, one of the men got out of the car and shot him, with no provocation. He says it was obvious that he was unarmed.

Sutherland says that when he woke up in the hospital, DHS agents arrested him for resisting arrest, a charge that DHS later dropped.

Five days after he was shot, and after DHS dropped the charges for resisting arrest, Sutherland says the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency issued a warrant to arrest him for overstaying his tourist visa. Ten days after he was shot, Sutherland says, immigration officials finally allowed him to call his family.

Then, he says, he served five months in the San Pedro Detention Center, where officials kept him segregated from the main prison population, made him wear a red "dangerous felon" uniform, though he says he is not a felon, and put him in solitary confinement for a month, all the while refusing to explain the reasons for his "dangerous felon" uniform, his segregation or solitary confinement.

He also says the officers stole his bracelet and Blackberry phone while he was unconscious.

Sutherland demands $2 million. He is represented by James Crandall, Janet Harris, and Geoffrey Hill of Crandall, Wade & Lowe.

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