SENATOBIA, Miss — Nearly a month after 10-year-old Quantavious Eason’s family said Senatobia, Mississippi police officers arrested and jailed the boy for urinating in public, they are now taking legal action.
“No apology is good enough for me,” Latonya Eason, the 10-year-old’s mother, said Wednesday at a press conference.
Eason said the responding officer initially gave her and her son a warning, but that suddenly changed when other officers arrived on the scene.
“They [were] in a huddle talking, and the next thing I know, an officer walks from over there and says, 'Per my lieutenant, I got to arrest your son,'” Eason said. “I said, 'Are you serious?'"
Senatobia Police Chief Richard Chandler said in a statement Monday that an officer is “no longer employed,” but Chandler didn't specify whether the officer resigned or was fired.
“I grew up in Mississippi. If it’s a crime to do that, I wouldn’t be a lawyer right now," Carlos Moore, the family’s attorney said.
The situation in Senatobia is raising broader questions of how those in authority deal with younger children under similar circumstances.
"I am here to put Senatobia on notice," Moore said Wednesday. "They have scarred this boy, possibly for life. I will do my job as his lawyer and get him counseling, but counseling is not promised and guaranteed to fix the problem.”
Experts from Memphis' Youth Villages suggest instead first identifying why a certain behavior is happening. The group then suggested helping a young person problem-solve.
“You scared him, right? You're creating that stress response in them, and when we have a stress response, we can't think as clearly,” Kathleen McNamara, Assistant Director of Clinical Training at Youth Villages, said. “We lose some of our thinking skills when we're stressed like that. You will also build their thinking skills, their neurocognitive skills, so in the future, they'll handle those situations better when they come up.”
As for Eason’s family, they're demanding more answers and transparency from authorities, or else they plan to file a lawsuit against Senatobia police and the city.
Wednesday ABC24 reached out repeatedly to Senatobia police, but we've yet to hear back.