A DeKalb County police officer was arrested Monday on accusations that he beat up and choked a 13-year-old boy.
Officer Matthew R. Davy was indicted Monday by a Walton County grand jury on charges of child cruelty and aggravated assault.
The incident happened in October when Davy allegedly punched his girlfriend’s son in the chest and head, then choked the teen until he was unconscious as reprimand for pulling a knife on another youth, according to police reports.
On Oct. 8, 2012, Walton County Sheriff’s deputies were called to a home in the 5000 block of Forest Ridge Drive in Loganville where a dispute had occurred between the boy and a friend and two young girls.
Witnesses told the responding deputies that the 13-year-old victim, upon being told to leave the property by the girls’ mother, pulled out the weapon.
“There is a knife produced, and the boy says something to the effect of ‘I’ll cut you,’” Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Davy, 36, was called to the home, witnesses said to the deputies, and argued loudly with the mother at the home before he attacked the teen in the front yard, according to reports.
“He punches (the boy), throws him to the ground, and, according to the mother of the girls, starts choking him until he passes out,” Chapman said.
Davy could not be reached for comment.
Next-door neighbor Bob Hastings told WSB Radio News/Talk AM 750 and now 95.5 FM that he saw Davy begin yelling at the youth before hitting him.
“There was some heated exchange with the kid,” Hastings said. “That’s when I observed several strikes between the adult male and the kid upside the head. They were pretty strong strikes.”
The teen appeared staggered by the blows, Hastings said.
“The kid kept crawling across the front yard trying to get back to his bike,” he said. “It appeared to me that he was having a hard time getting up off the ground.”
Davy, who lives with the 13-year-old and the boy’s mother, later acknowledged to deputies investigating the incident that he had indeed ‘disciplined’ the boy.
Chapman said deputies initially didn’t file charges against Davy, despite even the school raising concern, because investigators weren’t able to get witnesses that would corroborate the story of the woman who reported the incident.
“Even the little boy, who admires the guy and looks up to him as his father … he’s not making any accusations,” Chapman said. “So we present all of this to the District Attorney. The district attorney takes it before the grand jury and they indict him.”
Davy subsequently was arrested on Monday, and was released later that day from the Walton County Jail on $15,000 bond, jail officials said.
Davy worked with the DeKalb police for more than eight years before resigning in December 2007, then returning to the police department in December 2011, according to Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council records.
He worked with several private security firms in the interim, according to a Lexis-Nexis public records report.
DeKalb police spokeswoman Mekka Parish said Davy resigned from the department Tuesday in lieu of termination.
Hastings said he was surprised to learn that the adult he saw punching the boy was a policeman.
“The adult male was much larger than the young male,” Hastings said. “From a disciplinary stand-point, it’s not normal behavior. It seemed extreme to me.
“He obviously lost control, and to me it was almost like a temper tantrum. I would expect a police officer to behave in a more upstanding way.”
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