A federal jury has awarded an Atlanta man $100 million after an Atlanta officer tased him, leaving the man paralyzed for life.

In July 2018, then-65-year-old Jerry Blasingame was panhandling when he was approached by Atlanta police officer Jon Grubbs. Blasingame had his back to the officer when the stun gun was pulled on him. After being tasered, Blasingame fell forward, hitting his head on a grassy concrete slab. Body cam footage of the incident shows Blasingame lying face-down, unresponsive, and with blood pooling around his face.

Blasingame’s legal team explained that after Blasingame fell forward, the impact left him with a broken neck, multiple facial injuries, and a traumatic brain injury. Ultimately, the injuries he sustained left him paralyzed from the neck down with very little movement in his hands. The injuries also require Blasingame to have round-the-clock care for the rest of his life.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the federal jury awarded Blasingame the hefty judgment after determining that the officer used an unreasonable amount of force.

Blasingame’s conservator, Keith Edwards, along with Blasingame’s legal team, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in 2019. During litigation, Blasingame’s attorney Ven Johnson detailed that Blasingame “was panhandling and the police, of course, rolled up on him, chased him and then ran after him.”

The lawsuit describes how officers approached Blasingame while he was panhandling and seen talking to a driver in a vehicle. After officers told Blasingame to stop, Blasingame moved away from the driver and onto a guardrail on the side of the street. Johnson explained that “Grubbs gets out of the car and starts chasing my client — a 65-year-old man — and for what? For potentially asking people for money?”

Lawyers for the City of Atlanta pushed back, detailing that the city's training procedures and Department policy were not to blame for the events that unfolded.

Since the announcement of the verdict, officer Grubbs remains on the force, which has also raised questions in the surrounding community.

Following up on the verdict, the court sided with Blasingame, and Judge Steve Jones wrote alongside the verdict, “The record would allow the jury to find that Mr. Blasingame had not been committing a serious crime before he was tased/ that Officer Grubbs did not fear for his safety/ and that the exigent circumstances were not otherwise so severe as to permit Officer Grubbs’s use of force.”

Officer Grubbs has been ordered to pay Blasingame $40 million, while the city of Atlanta has been ordered to pay $60 million. In addition to the judgment against the city of Atlanta, both the city and Grubbs were found guilty of violating Blasingame’s civil rights.

As a result of his injuries, Blasingame has racked up over $14 million in medical debt. It is estimated that his cost of care will amount to roughly $1 million a year.