ST. LOUIS 鈥 A federal jury has awarded $300,000 to a woman who said a screaming, profane 狐狸视频 police detective performed an unreasonable body cavity search on her in a parking lot in 2012.
After a three-day trial, jurors on Wednesday awarded Kayla Robinson $200,000 in compensatory damages and $100,000 in punitive damages. She will also receive attorneys鈥 fees, one of her lawyers, Jeremy Hollingshead, said in an email.
Robinson, then 24, was with her boyfriend and his brother on Oct. 19, 2012, when they were pulled over by police near Natural Bridge Avenue and Goodfellow Boulevard in north 狐狸视频. They had just made a U-turn ahead of a police checkpoint. Hollingshead told jurors in his opening statement earlier this week that Robinson and the others thought it was an accident or crime scene. They had been tailgating at a Cardinals postseason game.
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Robinson鈥檚 boyfriend gave her a bag of marijuana, which she hid in her underwear.
Robinson told jurors Monday that Detective Angela Hawkins yanked her out of the car screaming, 鈥淲here鈥檚 the dope? Where鈥檚 the guns?鈥
After an 鈥渁ggressive鈥 pat-down, Hawkins took her behind a tractor-trailer in a nearby parking lot, put on gloves and searched her as she was hunched over, 鈥渟creaming and crying and begging her to stop,鈥 Robinson testified. She told jurors that she begged to be taken to the police station for the search instead.
Robert Isaacson, an assistant attorney general representing Hawkins, told jurors earlier that Hawkins only helped Robinson undo her belt so that she could retrieve the marijuana. He said that surveillance video would contradict Robinson鈥檚 claims. Testimony also included Hawkins expressing concern that Robinson may have been hiding a weapon.
A spokesman for Isaacson鈥檚 office declined to comment Thursday.
Robinson was arrested, but never charged, and filed an Internal Affairs complaint against Hawkins.
Robinson sued in 2017 but an .
is now a Brentwood police major.