Federal agents tackling a Venezuelan immigrant in a New Hampshire courthouse clipped an elderly man walking by with a cane and knocked him clean off his feet, graphic video shows.
The man they were arresting, Arnuel Marquez Colmenarez, 33, had shown up for an arraignment on Feb. 20 to face charges of drunk driving, driving without a license and failing to provide information after an accident stemming from his Feb. 9 arrest.
Colmenarez has since been transferred to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Texas, according to an online database accessed by The Associated Press. ICE did not answer requests for comment.
Unaware that their defendant had been arrested, prosecutors deemed Colmenarez a no-show and the judge issued a bench warrant for failure to appear.
On the video, the agents could be seen following their target into the elevator on the courthouse’s third floor as he arrived for his 1 p.m. arraignment. Nashua Circuit Court released the security camera footage last week showing the agents running after Colmenarez when he left the elevator, slamming him to the floor and cuffing him and leaving a stunned elderly bystander flat on his back.
The agents were from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and were working with ICE to round up immigrants alleged to be in the U.S. illegally, New Hampshire Public Radio reported.
The man they knocked down, who uses a canem suffered minor injuries but refused medical transport, WMUR-TV reported.
Witnesses were aghast at the violence of the takedown.
“Why is he so violently hustled to the ground the way he was in such an unsafe manner for him and everyone else around him? Why? What was the urgency?” one witness told WMUR.
“Unacceptable. That’s all I could think of,” the person said. “I was just so furious. I would not expect this in a courtroom in America.”
With News Wire Services
