17-year-old tased by cop paralyzed, suit says. FL sheriff’s office pays millions
A 17-year-old planned to attend a birthday party the day he encountered Palm Beach County, Florida, sheriff’s deputies, who are accused of paralyzing him from the neck down after one repeatedly tased him in May 2021, according to a lawsuit he filed.
The case brought by Timmie Lee Knox Jr., resulted in the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office settling the case for $5.5 million in July, according to the Palm Beach Post. The newspaper obtained and reviewed a copy of the settlement check via a public records request.
Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley, the West Palm Beach law firm that represented Knox, who’s now 22, confirmed to McClatchy News that the case was settled but declined to comment further on May 12 due to a confidentiality agreement.
Knox’s lawsuit named Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw and deputy sheriff Dustin Sullivan, who he accused of excessive force, as defendants. The case was moved to federal court a couple of months after it was filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court in February 2023, records show.
Teri Barbera, the sheriff’s office’s public information officer, told McClatchy News on May 12 that the sheriff’s office “does not comment on settlements” and declined to comment further.
What led to the lawsuit?
While on his way to a birthday party for a friend’s child at John Prince Park in Palm Beach County, on May 7, 2021, Knox was riding in a car that was being followed by an unmarked vehicle, according to his lawsuit.
The car was driven by a female friend, with another woman in the passenger seat and a “young man, two minors, and Timmie” in the backseat, a complaint says.
His friend became “concerned” once she noticed the vehicle following her, then ultimately pulled over in a “random” driveway of a nearby home, according to the complaint. The filing says she wasn’t “speeding” or driving “erratically” before she voluntarily stopped.
Afterward, Deputy Sullivan approached their car and demanded everyone to step out, according to the complaint.
Sullivan and other deputies began searching the car, the complaint says.
“Fearing for his safety,” Knox began to run away from the scene after one deputy walked over to him with “his taser drawn,” according to the filing.
Sullivan and the deputies chased Knox, who climbed onto the roof of a local home before trying to surrender by raising his hands in the air, the complaint says.
“Although Timmie is atop a roof, with his back to the officers, and empty-handed, Sullivan nearly immediately tasers Timmie,” his attorneys wrote in the filing.
Knox, who was tased for a full five seconds, lost his balance, then got tased a second time by Sullivan, according to the complaint.
This caused Knox to fall off the roof and into the backyard.
Knox landed on his neck and severed “his spinal cord,” causing “a permanent loss of all control of his lower extremities,” the complaint says.
While on the ground, deputies are accused of screaming “at Timmie saying ‘get up or we will slam you,’” according to the complaint.
Knox, however, could not move, the complaint says.
The deputies are accused of grabbing Knox and slamming him onto the ground, “further exacerbating his injuries” that became permanent, according to the filing.
The lawsuit argues the incident is a part of a larger pattern of deputies at the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office using excessive force.
Before the settlement, Knox’s attorneys had multiple experts give their opinions on what happened.
One expert, Dr. Geoffrey P. Alpert, a criminology and criminal justice professor at the University of South Carolina, wrote that, based on a review of records related to the case, the force used against Knox wasn’t justified.
Tasering Knox on top of a roof violated the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office’s policy, as deputies aren’t supposed to use a taser on “an elevated subject,” Alpert wrote in an opinion filed in court.
Alpert noted that although Sullivan thought Knox had a gun, using a taser on him while he was on a roof “was detrimental to him and others,” the report said.
In a separate case involving the sheriff’s office, a $22 million settlement was awarded to another man who was shot by a Palm Beach County deputy in 2013, WPTV-TV reported.
The man, Dontrell Stephens, who was paralyzed from the shooting, ultimately received $6 million, according to the TV station.
Later, Stephens died in 2021 as a result of his injuries from the shooting, his attorney Rosalyn Sia Baker-Barnes told the Palm Beach Post.
Baker-Barnes also represented Knox’s case.
This story was originally published May 12, 2025 at 3:51 PM with the headline "17-year-old tased by cop paralyzed, suit says. FL sheriff’s office pays millions."
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