Woman forced to ground in Missouri.
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Pregnant Woman Forced to the Ground
Oct. 25, 2007
Share Elementary school principal Yvette Hayes will never forget the night of July 13, 2007. She was pregnant at the time and believes police jeopardized the life of her unborn child.
A Mother's OutrageWhen Hayes was pulled over in the Kansas City suburb of Independence, Mo., on Interstate 70, she thought it was a routine stop. "I'm thinking they'd ask for my driver's license," she said.
Instead, police drew guns on the five months' pregnant mother — whose two children were in the back seat of the car — and told her to lie on the ground.
"Get your hands up," one officer shouted while another ordered her to "go down on to your belly. Arms out to your side! Palms up, palms up!"
Shocked and sobbing, all Hayes could say was, "I'm pregnant."
Hayes had just left a local JCPenney, where a store security guard misidentified her green Jeep as a vehicle involved in stealing cars from the parking lot.
"I was lying on I-70 on my belly, trucks going by at least 70 miles," Hayes said.
Realizing their mistake minutes later, officers helped the distraught woman up.
The video camera caught the police as they tried to recover from the incident. "What's your 4-year-old's name?" one officer asked in an attempt to calm her. "We're going wait for you regain your composure and let you go back up to your car to your babies. They don't want to see mommy sad."
The officers are then captured talking between themselves.
"I'll do a report on this to cover our a--," the officer said. "If they got a black male suspect, they need to be sure they got a black male driver so I don't traumatize a very pregnant woman anymore and put her on the side of I-70."
Hayes' supporters say the department store singled her out because of her race. Police say they followed procedure, but simply made a mistake.
As for JCPenney's response, Hayes says she never got an apology.
"I don't want this to happen to anyone," she said. "If you ever had guns pointed at you, it's a horrible feeling."