Man Was 'Cooked on Asphalt' and Got 3rd Degree Burns When Phoenix Cops Pinned Him During Arrest: Attorney

Mar. 15, 2025

Photo:ABC15 Arizona

ABC15 Arizona

A man plans to sue the Phoenix Police Department for over $15 million, claiming he was restrained on hot pavement for more than four minutes, causing burns across his body that left him hospitalized for over a month.

Attorneys for Michael Kenyon, 30, filed a notice of claim against the city last week, according to localABC 15andThe Arizona Republic, saying he plans to file a lawsuit in federal court if the city doesn’t soon settle the case for $15.53 million.

“Michael is 30 years old. At an average life expectancy, he should live another 42 years. That is 15,330 days,” Kenyon’s attorneys wrote in the claim, according to ABC 15. “We are confident that not a single one of you would choose to live in Michael’s disfigured body and traumatized mind for $1,000 a day — and we are confident a jury would agree that this is a modest sum for what the Phoenix Police Department has caused to him.”

CBS Newspreviously reportedthat Kenyon was walking through a parking lot and talking on his cell phone when police stopped and questioned him last July. Soon after they began questioning Kenyon, four officers pinned him on the asphalt as he pleaded that he could not move and was in pain.

Police have not released body cam footage from the incident, despite media requests, but an onlooker’s cellphone footage showed the incident take place, according to ABC 15.

“Please… please… I can’t move. I didn’t do anything,” Kenyon calls out to the officers in the video as they’re forcing him to the ground, according to the outlet.

Kenyon has not been charged with a crime related to the incident.

ABC 15 reports that Kenyon was taken to a local hospital where he spent more than a month recovering from third-degree burns across his face, arms, chest and legs. The outlet reports that chunks of his flesh are missing from above his knees.

Kenyon’s attorneys said the temperature in Phoenix that day was 114 degrees, estimating the asphalt was somewhere between 180 and 200 degrees, CBS previously reported.

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up forPEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletterfor breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.

Kenyon’s claim in court last week says that six months after the incident, he is “still undergoing physical therapy and undergoing additional surgeries to attempt to restore simple use of his body,” according to theArizona Republic.“He is permanently disfigured as a result of your officers’ actions,” Kenyon’s attorneys wrote in the claim, according to the newspaper.

A spokesperson for the Phoenix Police Department said in a statement to PEOPLE that officers were responding to “a theft” in the area at the time and that they stopped Kenyon in the parking lot, where he “struggled with police, which result[ed in] him being taken to the ground on the hot asphalt.”

“The man sustained burns to different parts of his body from the time he was on the ground,” the spokesperson said, adding that officers then took Kenyon to the hospital after determining he was not a suspect in the reported theft.

source: people.com