Woman's suit against Metro officers enters third week

A jury is expected to begin deliberating soon in the case against three Metro Police officers accused of beating and arresting a woman without cause four years ago.

The civil rights suit the woman and her husband have brought against the officers entered its third week of trial in federal court today.

Officers Steven Leyba, Greg Ziel and Michael Etherton have testified that they were investigating a reported domestic dispute July 22, 1994, at 5464 Consul Ave. when a scuffle began with an intoxicated Brenda Nadell.

Nadell admits she was drinking and doesn't remember everything, but she blames police for provoking the situation. She said she was called a profane name by Leyba, pulled out of bed, hit between her legs and arrested for "doing nothing wrong."

"I started screaming, crying, saying I want my husband, I want an attorney," Nadell recalled telling Leyba that night. "I knew it was wrong, what he did ... I wasn't doing anything. I was sleeping."

Nadell, then 27, had driven to the home so that her sister, Crystal Guerra, then 19, could interview for a baby-sitting job.

Homeowner Michael Laing offered the women beer, according to the suit. Nadell said she had three or four beers and two or three shots of what she said was 107-proof Goldschlager liqueur in about an hour.

Nadell, who weighed 110 pounds, said she was drinking on an empty stomach and became ill. She said she lay down in a bedroom after taking off outer clothing wet from a dip in the pool.

Nadell said her sister came in later, begging her to drive them home because the Laings were arguing and Sherry Laing had cut her arm by punching out a living room window.

Nadell does not remember paramedics arriving or Sherry Laing going to the hospital.

Nadell, however, vividly recalls police shining a flashlight in her face while in bed with her baby, Melody, and her sister. The officers deny carrying or using flashlights that night.

Nadell described a "tug of war" with the bed covers, saying police tried to pull them off and she tried to pull them up to her neck because she wasn't fully clothed.

"They were yelling at us, telling us to get out of bed," Nadell said.

Guerra said she told police the injured woman was gone and that she and her sister had done nothing wrong.

Etherton and Leyba claim they couldn't hear what Guerra was saying because Nadell was yelling, so Etherton questioned Guerra in another room.

Nadell said Leyba hit her between the legs when he tried to lift her out of bed.

"I was wiggling, moving around," Nadell said. Leyba let go of Nadell and left the room. When he returned, Nadell said, Leyba pushed her against the wall when she tried to read his name plate.

Leyba claimed Nadell kicked him and scratched his arm, which led to a charge of battery on a police officer. She was also charged with being under the influence of a controlled substance, a felony. Both charges were later dropped.

Nadell said she struggled and screamed when carried out of the house horizontally in handcuffs. She was standing outside when she fell after something hit her ankle.

"It was like they let go of me," Nadell said. "I couldn't stop myself ... I remember hitting my knee ... trying to keep my face from (hitting the ground)."

Police said Nadell kept kicking in the back of the patrol car so Etherton pinned her legs while Leyba drove to Clark County Detention Center. Police said the fidgeting woman spit at a jail medical team trying to take her blood so she was taken to University Medical Center. She was X-rayed and sedated to get a blood sample, which showed her blood-alcohol concentration to be 0.28.

Nadell remembers waking up in the hospital strapped to a bed, thinking it was a "mental institution."

Leyba is accused of booking Nadell into jail as a "Jane Doe," meaning he did not know her identity. Nadell insists she told Leyba her name and "he told me to shut up." Nadell's husband, Brian Nadell, said the lack of a good identity meant it took twice as long to bail her out of jail.

Police took Melody to Child Haven that Friday night. The couple said they were denied their child until a court hearing Monday. At the juvenile facility, they discovered the baby's mother was listed as a "Kay Holiday" -- not Brenda Nadell.

Brenda Nadell told her story to Metro's Internal Affairs Bureau, where pictures of her bruised body were taken. The couple hired several attorneys at whose direction she hired a neurologist and psychologist and racked up several thousand dollars in bills.

The doctors said the July 1994 incident caused Brenda Nadell severe depression, anxiety and paranoia. Attorney-appointed doctors claimed a bump on her forehead that Nadell said occurred when she fell damaged her frontal lobe -- the brain's memory source.

Metro's defense team introduced another psychologist's records stating Nadell admitted using alcohol to escape depression after being held hostage for 14 hours and raped in June 1993 by a man she was dating during a six-month marital separation.

Metro's attorneys also produced evidence that an emergency room doctor who treated Brenda Nadell for the 1993 rape noted a bump on her forehead in the same spot she claimed was caused during the Metro incident a year later.

Dr. William Sutherling, a neurologist retained by Metro's attorneys to evaluate Brenda Nadell in 1996, testified that his tests found her normal despite her many complaints -- including memory loss, hearing voices, a twitching lower lip and depression.

archive