An 18-year-old from Texas was arrested for walking in the middle of the road during a snowstorm as he tried to avoid icy sidewalks.
Rodney Reese was arrested on February 16 and charged with being a pedestrian in the roadway, a misdemeanor offense, the Daily Mail reported.
Police officers said they received a report about a black man walking in the middle of a snowy road wearing a shirt.
Body camera footage posted on Facebook shows the officers approaching Reese and repeatedly asking if he is okay and where he is going.
Cops followed the teen for more than two minutes before arresting him.
Plano Police Chief Ed Drain later dropped the charges against the teen and said the arrest was not consistent with why cops were called to perform a wellness check.
In the bodycam footage, a female cop can be heard asking: “Hey man, you trying to get home? Are you trying to get home?”
Reese, who had been walking home from his job at Walmart, responds: “I’m on the way home, I’m straight.”
The officer then replies: “Alright, but you’re walking in the middle of the road,” to which the teen responds that he understands and adds “my bad.”
The cops continue to follow the teen, who tells the officers that he is going home as they repeatedly ask him where he is going.
“What do y’all want?” Reese asks.
“We’re just trying to figure out where you’re going,” the female cop says, to which Reese responds: “Home. I just said.”
She asks Reese to “stop for a minute” so they can talk to him but the teen tells them: “Please don’t touch me.”
“Ma’am, don’t touch me,” the teen says again as the female cop moves closer to him.
The male cop then says that they are “doing an investigation,” and the teen asks: “For what? I’m going home.”
But the male cop tells him: “You are officially detained.”
The teen was put in the back of a police car and was charged with being a pedestrian in the roadway.
Reese was then forced to spend the night in jail.
In an interview with FOX 4, Reese said: “They just treated me like I was a criminal or something.”
He also said that he had been walking in the middle of the street as the sidewalks were covered in snow and ice.
“Just a simple encounter. A simple encounter. That’s why I tried to dodge it, so I could make it home, I don’t know,” he said in tears.
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Replaced!