A 13-year-old Baltimore girl needed 10 stitches in her head after a police officer hit her with a baton in an altercation caught on video, WBAL-TV reported.The video, released today, shows the encounter between the officer and the girl, identified as Diamond. A photograph taken after the incident last October shows a bandage on Diamond’s head and bloodstains on her Vanguard Middle School shirt. Two of her relatives, who also attend Vanguard, were also involved. The name of the officer involved in the incident has not been released.
Footage shows Diamond’s cousin, identified as Starr, talking to the officer after walking down a stairway. The officer then grabs her by the arm and pushes her against a wall and seems to hold her by her hair at one point.
“The officer was hollering at her and said, ‘Little girl, get down here,’” Starr’s grandmother, Vanessa Ward, told WBAL. “And so Starr said, ‘My name is not little girl, it’s Starr.’ Starr came on down the steps, and Starr said that’s when the officer grabbed her.”