Texas Residents Sue After Police Allegedly Hold Them at Gunpoint and Break Man’s Dialysis Port

An elderly Texas man and his partner say in a lawsuit filed Thursday that they were held at gunpoint and subjected to a painful and illegal traffic stop that left him with a broken dialysis port.

Michael Lewis, 67, and Regina Armstead, 57, allege in a federal civil rights lawsuit that they were driving back home in Rosenberg, Texas, after picking up lunch when they were pulled over by police. The lawsuit says that Rosenberg police officers, who were searching for a group of teens that had allegedly brandished a gun, held the couple at gunpoint, handcuffed and detained them, unlawfully searched their car and seized Armstead’s phone, and destroyed a life-saving medical device installed in his arm, all despite the couple obviously not being teenagers.

The lawsuit, filed on Lewis and Armstead’s behalf by lawyers with the National Police Accountability Project (NPAP), is seeking damages for violations of the couple’s Fourth Amendment rights and reforms of the Rosenberg Police Department.

According to the suit, Rosenberg officers trained their guns on the elderly couple, forced them to throw their keys out the window and get onto their knees, and handcuffed them. Lewis tried to explain to the officers that he had a stint in his hand for regular dialysis treatment and that his doctor had instructed him not to place any pressure on it, but the officers ignored him.

Police also confiscated their cell phones and searched their car, the suit says. The couple was detained for 45 minutes before they were finally released. According to the lawsuit, “as a result of the handcuffing during his arrest, Mr. Lewis’s medical device in his wrist malfunctioned. This resulted in three separate medical procedures to replace his fistula.”

Lewis and Armstead had to contact the police department to retrieve Armstead’s cell phone and discovered that the key fob for their car had