An Ohio woman was injured and then charged with resisting arrest after a sheriff’s deputy wrestled her to the floor and pried open her mouth after she took a prescription pain reliever.
Siobhan Householder was waiting in a prisoner-holding room May 8 in domestic relations court while she waited for a warrant to be lifted on a charge of failure to appear at a hearing, reported the Akron Beacon Journal.
The 35-year-old Akron woman went to court on her own and did not believe she was in custody, so she thought she would be permitted to take two Tylenol tablets for a tooth infection.
A spokesman for the Summit County sheriff’s office said Householder was in custody, and he said the deputy stopped her from taking the medication for her own protection.
A surveillance camera inside the holding room shows Deputy Eric Vaughan leave with a jail inmate shortly before Householder walks in alone, holding her purse, a second bag, and a cup.
Vaughan and the inmate return shortly afterward to the holding room, and Householder said she took the medicine about two minutes later with a sip of her soda.
She was taking a third tablet when the deputy confronted her, Householder said.
“He said, ‘What are you taking?’ and I said, Tylenol,” she said. “And he said, ‘Spit it out,’ and I said, ‘I can’t.’ I meant to say I can’t spit it out because I had already swallowed the other pills.”
But before she could explain, she said Vaughan yanked her up, threw her to the floor, and tried to pry open her mouth with his fingers as he pulled her hair.
“He was pulling down on my bottom lip and squeezing my face at the same time,” Householder said. “He basically pulled my lip away from my teeth.”
The bottle of prescription pills fell onto the floor during the struggle, and Vaughan read the label and collects a single pill that fell onto the floor.
“They were acting like I wanted to escape from Alcatraz,” she said. “It was awful.”
Householder said she suffered a bruised chin, cuts inside her mouth, bruising on her legs, and some hair loss.
Paramedics treated her at the scene for a bloody mouth, and she was charged with resisting arrest and obstruction of official business.
Householder, who was charged in April with resisting arrest in an unrelated case, was at a hospital emergency room later that same day when she was released with summonses on those charges.
A magistrate lifted the warrant in the domestic relations case the same day.
Deputies seized Householder’s prescription medication, including nine Tylenol and two diazepam tablets, and 26 ibuprofen tablets she kept in a sandwich baggie in her purse.
Investigators said they also seized three unknown pills in a latex glove, but Householder denies putting them there.
She has not been charged with any drug offenses.
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