HOUSTON – Channel 2 is getting a first look at surveillance video from inside the jail cell during a brutal attack.
It shows the moments when Houston police civilian jailer Lasswon Shannon repeatedly hit a handcuffed inmate in a padded cell.
The victim in this case, 24-year-old Akrem Azzam, had been arrested in June for aggravated assault.
In the video, you can see Azzam walk up to the closed cell door and, according to court documents, spit at Shannon. It appears Shannon then reopened the cell door and punched Azzam in the head several times, until he fell to the floor.
"Lasswon was spit on and I will say this, he is a good person and he was a good employee for six years for the city of Houston. He reacted like a lot of people would react. He understands the consequences for that and he accepted responsibility," says Mario Madrid, his attorney.
According to probable cause court documents, Shannon told police he felt like he needed to "control the situation."
But after an investigator with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office reviewed this surveillance video, he “…found the Defendant’s account of the incident to be inconsistent with the surveillance video which showed the door of the cell to be closed at the time the Complainant spit and clearly showed the Defendant repeatedly striking the Complainant with a closed fist.”
Shannon eventually pleaded guilty.
"Lasswon received a year of deferred adjudication, he had to do community service and he had to do five days in jail, the jail time is served on the weekend doing work with the Sheriff's Department," says Madrid.
Shannon is considered relieved of duty pending the outcome of an HPD internal affairs investigation.