A bystander video showing the arrest of a 49-year-old Monongah woman on Aug. 1 went viral over the weekend, raising questions about the behavior of the arresting officer, Monongah Police Chief Nathan Lanham.
According to a criminal complaint filed by Lanham in Marion County Magistrate Court, the incident began when he was traveling on Bridge Street and Tower Hill Road in Monongah and saw a tan Jeep with no visible inspection and expired registration. He reports that he conducted a traffic stop near Shaver Street and Lambert Avenue.
In the complaint, Lanham writes that he identified himself as the Monongah police chief, gave his reason for the stop and requested vehicle registration, driver’s license and proof of insurance from the driver, Sarah Beth Delloma, 49, of Monongah.
In his account of the incident, Lanham said Delloma told him all of her documents were at her house, to which he “let her know I would be towing the vehicle, and she wasn’t free to leave.”
Delloma’s recollection of the encounter was not the same.
Defense attorney Joe Shaffer told MetroNews Talkline on Monday that his client was driving home when she saw a white vehicle quickly approaching her but couldn’t tell if it was a police vehicle until red and blue lights came on.
She pulled over immediately, Shaffer said, and was approached by a man wearing khaki pants and a black shirt. He had a pistol strapped to his thigh.
Unsure whether Lanham was an actual police officer and unable to immediately see anything on his shirt indicating a department, Delloma asked to see his badge.
“That’s when he just went from zero to a 100,” Shaffer said.
Delloma, who has no criminal history and has never been arrested, said she became very scared and didn’t believe Lanham was acting like a police officer.
After she asked the officer for identification again, “he then went completely berserk,” Shaffer said.
He said Delloma did tell the officer her information was at her house, which was only around 30 yards away in an attempt to get herself to safety or close to someone who could help her.
According to Shaffer, Lanham drew a gun on her and held it to the window at head level and said, “get out of the car or I will shoot you” and eventually began pounding on the window and door.
Fearful for her life, Delloma put the car in gear and drove down the narrow, dead-end street where she lives, hoping to attract attention and get help.
In Lanham’s account, when he asked Delloma to exit the vehicle she refused and fled down Shaver Street, which he described as “a narrow road in a residential area with children and elderly.”
At one point, he said Delloma stopped her vehicle but fled again, driving around a house and cutting through a back yard where he was able to head her off and stop the vehicle.
This is where Delloma’s sister begins recording the interaction.
According to the complaint filed by Lanham, he exited his patrol vehicle and “gave multiple repetitive, loud, clear, verbal lawful orders to exit the vehicle.”
In the video, a man identified as Lanham, is initially seen beside a Jeep SUV stopped in a grassy area, screaming at the driver multiple times to “get out of the f—— car,” pulling on the door handle and threatening to shoot them, before pulling a gun from the holster strapped to his thigh and pointing it at the vehicle’s driver’s-side window.
At one point in the profanity-laden video, a bystander can be heard telling the officer to watch his language, to which he turns and replies, “go f— yourself.”
He continues to yell at Delloma to get out of the vehicle while his firearm is pointed in the area of where her head would be on the other side of the window.
A short time later, a visibly irritated Lanham walks away from Delloma’s vehicle before returning with a large, sledge-hammerlike device and proceeds to shatter the driver’s window.
While there is no mention of the firearm he is seen pulling on Delloma in Lanham’s complaint, he does state that Delloma “continued to deny lawful order at which point I removed a breaching tool from my patrol vehicle to force my way into the vehicle. I struck the driver’s side window until it broke.”
The video shows Delloma exiting the vehicle from the passenger’s side and walking away before Lanham slams her to the ground while she repeatedly yells, “Help me!”
In his report, Lanham states she Delloma fled on foot, he caught up with her and “escorted her to the ground.”
Shaffer said Delloma was covered in glass from when Lanham busted the window of her vehicle and believed she was about to die. She tried to escape to safety by exiting from the passenger’s side.
Delloma was subsequently arrested and charged with felony fleeing an officer in a vehicle with reckless disregard to the safety of others.
She was held at North Central Regional Jail on $125,000 bond from Thursday until Monday morning when Magistrate Brian Shuck granted Prosecuting Attorney Jeff Freeman’s motion to dismiss the case based on the facts in the complaint not supporting the charge.
“I’ve been practicing law for 30 years. I have never encountered a situation where police officers behave like this,” Shaffer told Talkline.
“The guy is just totally out of control,” he said. “He had the audacity to arrest her for that 30-yard distance she drove from the initial stop to the grassy area … totally a bogus charge.”
Shaffer said in general there are at least some facts in a case that are of the detriment to the defendant, “I can’t find any in this case, I cannot find one.”
“This individual, in my opinion, does not need to have a badge and gun or to be in a position of authority over anybody.”
The fact that Delloma did not comply with Lanham’s orders and then left the scene should not matter in this case, according to Shaffer.
“He refused to provide her any identification at all that he was a police officer,” he said. “An official badge was politely requested and never shown. So, she was operating under the belief that this was not a police officer.”
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