Former McKinney, Texas, police officer Eric Casebolt isn't a racist or a psycho, but he had a very stressful shift before he had to deal with teenagers at a pool party, his lawyer says. She says that before he responded to that call, he had dealt with a call where a man shot himself in front of his family, and he spent time consoling the man's widow, CNN reports. The lawyer says Casebolt then dealt with a teenage girl who was threatening to kill herself, and the two calls "took an emotional toll" on the officer before he got the call about the pool party, which he was "reluctant" to respond to but decided to handle when he was told there had been an assault, the Los Angeles Times reports. She says that despite how it may seem in video of the incident, he wasn't targeting minorities.
Casebolt, who has resigned from the force, realizes "that his emotions got the best of him" and "apologizes to all who were offended," the lawyer told reporters. She says Casebolt has received death threats and is now in hiding. A lawyer for Dajerria Becton, the 15-year-old girl Casebolt slammed to the ground, however, tells the AP that stress isn't a good-enough excuse and the family believes the girl's civil rights were violated. When he announced Casebolt's resignation, the McKinney chief of police called his aggressive conduct "inexcusable," the Times reports. "He came to the call out of control," the chief said. "I had 12 officers on the scene, and 11 of them performed according to their training." (More Texas stories.)
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