Saturday, November 7, 2009

Quad Dumped from Chair, Handcuffed, Arrested


While a quadriplegic was being arrested for blocking a police car with his wheelchair so his teenage daughter wouldn't be removed from their home after a domestic dispute, she sobbed hysterically inside the cruiser and repeatedly begged two officers to let her father go.



"Please don't take my dad to jail!" the 16-year-old girl can be heard crying on the audio of a police car video of the incident obtained Friday by The Enquirer. "Please don't hurt him! ... Daddy! Daddy! Please let him go! Please, oh please! Please don't hurt him!"

James K. Kestler, 39, who is paralyzed from the chest down and has minimal use of his arms, said he remains incredulous that he was pulled from his wheelchair during a rain storm, painfully handcuffed and taken to the Clermont County Jail after getting into a dispute with his daughter.

"I can't believe it happened," Kestler said. "There's no sense in it."

Police arrested Kestler on July 30 after he got into an argument with his daughter over an eyebrow piercing that he had told her not to get.

Kestler's ex-wife, Carrie, who was in Vermont, phoned police after her daughter called and said he was going to kill her, according to a police report.

"She was upset because I was taking her cell phone and grounding her," Kestler said of his daughter.

 "He couldn't possibly kill her," said Tim Smith, Kestler's defense attorney. "He's paralyzed from the chest down (as the result of a 2005 fall). "She admits to police he never said he was going to kill her."

Kestler, who used to deliver milk to stores for a dairy, said he can't grasp anything with his hands, but he can operate a motorized wheelchair with the palm of his right hand. He blocked a police cruiser with his wheelchair after Officers Skip Rasfeld and John Chirgwin said they would take the girl to a grandmother's home to cool off.


"Mr. Kestler said he'd rather be arrested," Rasfeld wrote in a police report. "I did not want to arrest him, (but) Mr. Kestler was beyond all reasoning."

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1 comment:

  1. According to his daughter he got everything he deserved. Their so called disputes continue. He is a miserable man, whom is constantly looking.g to sue someone and ruin a life.

    ReplyDelete