Suspect allegedly bites off portion of Denver police officer's finger during arrest
A Denver police officer is missing a portion of his finger after arresting a man who allegedly bit it off from the last knuckle before spitting it out.
Officers were trying to take 48-year-old Tyron Brooks into custody Saturday afternoon in an alley behind the Pioneer Bar at East Wesley Avenue and South University Boulevard. Brooks was standing in a "fighting stance" over a woman, shouting at her as she was crying when officers arrived, they wrote in an arrest report.
Brooks was shouting "erratically, nonsensically, and irrationally," an officer wrote in the report, but a statement Brooks allegedly made to officers at the scene is redacted. Officers tried to get Brooks away from the woman but said he refused and continued shouting at the woman. They then tried to get the woman to come over to them and tell them what happened but said Brooks wouldn't let her.
Brooks allegedly covered the woman's mouth after officers asked if she needed help and that's when those officers stepped in and tried to detain Brooks, fearing for the woman's safety, they said in the arrest report.
As they tried to handcuff him, Brooks resisted but was finally taken to the ground on his belly, police say. He then turned onto his back, turned his head toward one officer, "opened his mouth, and intentionally bit through [redacted's] left ring finger between the last knuckle and the fingernail completely amputating the distal portion of the officer's finger," the report reads. Brooks then "turned his head and spit the amputated portion of [redacted's] finger out of his mouth."
Officers finally got Brooks under control and took him into custody. The officer in question's name is redacted from the report but a Denver police spokesman told CBS News Colorado the officer has been released from the hospital. No other details were immediately available.
The woman at the scene refused to talk to police and so Brooks was taken into custody to face charges of second-degree assault on a police officer -- a felony -- as well as for two outstanding warrants; one for extortion and another for obstructing police, the arrest report says.
