A jury acquitted a former Philadelphia police detective who was accused of assaulting a man while escorting him out of the Special Victims Unit.
Adam O’Donnell was found not guilty on all charges Tuesday. Those charges included aggravated assault, simple assault, kidnapping and unlawful restraint.
O’Donnell, 44, was accused of kicking Theodore Life, Jr., 46, in the knee as he escorted him out of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Special Victims Unit on 300 E. Hunting Park Avenue back on February 3, 2015. Life claimed they were out of the view of security cameras at the time. Life said O’Donnell then placed him in an unmarked police vehicle, drove him to the Hunting Park section of the city and dropped him off on a random roadside.
Life said he was unable to walk due to the pain and he had to call his father to pick him up and drive him to the hospital. Life was then treated for a non-displaced femur fracture.
O’Donnell denied the allegations against him and claimed Life had lunged at him which forced him to step aside and trip him, causing him to fall to the ground, according to Philly.com.
O’Donnell was arrested on February 17, 2016 and suspended from the police department as a result of the charges against him. Now that he’s been acquitted, O’Donnell hopes to rejoin the force, according to Philly.com.
O’Donnell was a nine-year veteran of the department assigned to the Special Victims Unit. He was well known for surviving a shooting back on New Year’s Eve in 2010. O’Donnell and his partner at the time stopped a van for a traffic violation. As they approached the van, the driver pointed a .38 caliber revolver out of the window and opened fire. O’Donnell was struck in his ballistic vest, suffering blunt force trauma to the chest, but managed to return fire. His partner was also injured.
