ATLANTA — A fight between an off-duty Fulton County sheriff deputy’s daughter and a neighbor’s daughter has led to an internal affairs investigation, Channel 2′s Ashli Lincoln learned.
“It makes me mad and angry and scared,” Damien Smith said.
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“They’re just manhandling my daughter, pushed on her, grabbing her, and I see my daughter just crying,” Smith said.
Alarm and outrage is what Damien Smith says was going through his mind upon seeing two adult women allegedly assaulting his 12-year-old daughter.
Smith said his daughter called him for help after the women allegedly assaulted the teen, as seen in a cellphone video recorded by a bystander.
“The first thing I told them to do was get your hands off my daughter,” he said.
Smith admits he was angry and he did have a holstered gun on his hip. Channel 2 asked him if at any point during the situation if he pulled his gun.
“Not one time did I pull out my gun, not one time,” Smith said.
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He said at the time, he didn’t know one of the women in the video was an off-duty Fulton County sheriff’s deputy.
“Being aggressive with it, I’m a (expletive) deputy sheriff,” she said in the video.
Smith says the two women told him they were upset over a playground incident involving his daughter and the deputy’s daughter at the Deerwood Park in Southwest Atlanta. He said the women were very rough with his daughter.
She was taken to the hospital for a severe strain to her wrist. Just when they thought the drama was over, later that night, FCSO deputies arrived to Smith’s home and arrested him.
He told Channel 2 he was charged with simple assault related to the park incident and said the off-duty officer he confronted was present during the arrest.
“She walked out the dark, looked down at me, put her hands in her pocket and smiled,” Smith said.
Channel 2 got the deputy’s side of this incident. In her words outlined in this criminal arrest warrant from the Fulton County Courthouse, she said, “she was in fear of her own life after that father brandished a weapon.”
“This incident right here was too much for me,” Smith said.
The off-duty deputy said she was notified by another child at the park that the teen allegedly hit her 6-year-old daughter in the head with a stick.
However, the warrant doesn’t mention the altercation between the deputy and Smith’s daughter, or the second adult seen in the video.
The deputy said the father was irate at the time before she identified herself as a Fulton County sheriff’s deputy.
“As you can see by the video, she was clearly the aggressor,” Smith said.
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Channel 2 spoke with Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat, who said this deputy has been reassigned to administrative duty pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation.
“I feel like the charges was trumped up because of a personal matter that happened between my daughter and her daughter,” Smith said.
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