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Philadelphia lawyer S. Lee Merritt, the attorney for a woman who accused a Texas trooper of sexual assault after a traffic stop early Sunday on Interstate 35, is apologizing after bodycam video was released late Tuesday that appears to contradict the claims.
“The body camera footage released directly conflicts with the accounts reported to my office,” Merritt said in press release Wednesday.
“Officer Daniel Hubbard appears to comport himself professionally during the duration of the traffic stop and arrest and—without more—should be cleared of any wrongdoing,” he said.
“It is deeply troubling when innocent parties are falsely accused and I am truly sorry for any trouble these claims have caused Officer Hubbard and his family. I take full responsibility for amplifying those claims to the point of national concern.”
Sherita Dixon-Cole, 37, of Grapevine, was pulled over for a traffic violation at around 1:30 a.m. Sunday on southbound I-35 in Ellis County near U.S. 287 and then was arrested for driving while intoxicated.
She was taken to the Ellis County Jail.
New York-based activist and writer Shaun King later claimed in a Twitter post that went viral that although Dixon-Cole passed field sobriety tests, she was arrested because the trooper "didn't like her attitude."
King claimed that the trooper sexually assaulted Dixon-Cole and threatened to shoot her fiancée, who had arrived at the scene of the traffic stop in response to a phone call from Cole.
The DPS says it moved quickly to review video from the incident and said it found no evidence to support the allegations and provided the video to the Ellis County District Attorney’s Office, which also reviewed the video and then authorized the reelease.
“The video shows absolutely no evidence to support the egregious and unsubstantiated accusations against the trooper during the DWI arrest of the suspect,” DPS said.
“The department is appalled that anyone would make such a despicable, slanderous and false accusation against a peace officer who willingly risks his life every day to protect and serve the public.”
The viral posts that circulated the false claims did some collateral damage, as well.
A Waco lawyer who represents a second trooper with the same last name demanded earlier this week that Merritt and King correct the erroneous identification of his client as the target of the allegations.
In a letter Monday to King and Merritt, Waco lawyer, Vance Dunnam, Jr., who represents Jarrod Kyle Hubbard of Waco, says his client “have been erroneously identified through the internet and other means (including without limitation, by photograph, Facebook account and contact information) as the officer involved in the event.”
"My client is not the Officer Daniel Hubbard...and is not a relative of that officer. My client has never been known as 'Daniel' and does not work or reside in Waxahachie, Texas," he wrote.
“The identification error has defamed and is defaming my client and his family resulting in substantial harassment and threats necessitating his discontinuation of his Facebook page” and to request “protection for himself and his family from appropriate law enforcement agencies.”
Dunnam demanded both King and Merritt act “immediately to minimize the harm that has been and is being caused (to) my client and his family (including without limitation, by publicly disseminating information clearly and unambiguously disclosing that my client is not and has been erroneously identified as the Officer Daniel Hubbard…”
http://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Te...ns-against-trooper-in-DWI-stop-483176441.html
So she lied, not before Shaun King decided to weigh in without knowing any of the details, though.
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