NEWS
Former Navajo Nation officer pleads guilty in excessive force case
Officer used stun gun, pepper spray on man after responding to neighbor dispute
A former Navajo Nation police officer is facing two years in federal prison for using a stun gun and pepper spray on a man while accusing him of “picking on old ladies” during an incident in McKinley County in 2024.
Henry Antonio Jr. pleaded guilty Tuesday to deprivation of rights in U.S. District Court for New Mexico. The indictment states Antonio, who joined the Navajo Nation Police Department in 2020, “without legal justification, tased, hit, punched, and pepper sprayed” a man identified in court records as D.C.
A plea agreement states that prosecutors and Antonio’s defense attorney settled on a possible sentence “not to exceed 24 months' imprisonment.” The agreement states, “This agreement takes into account the Defendant's acceptance of responsibility.”
Antonio has been released to await sentencing, which has not been scheduled. His attorney declined to comment Thursday.
A spokesperson for the Navajo Nation Police Department could not be reached.
According to Antonio’s plea agreement, on April 3, 2024, he responded to D.C.’s home after the man reportedly harassed his neighbor, an elderly woman. Antonio and D.C. had a back-and-forth as the officer told him to “just leave her alone.”
When D.C. talked back, “without giving any directives to D.C., including directives to show me his hands, I pulled my taser and tased him,” the plea agreement states. Antonio used the Taser on D.C. for 46 seconds “and at no point… did he do or say anything threatening toward me.”
The plea agreement states D.C. fell to the ground saying, “I didn’t do nothing,” and Antonio handcuffed him before beating him repeatedly. At his patrol vehicle, D.C. told Antonio, “I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” and Antonio held D.C. by the neck and “pepper sprayed him in the face.”
“As he yelled in pain, I asked him, ‘You pick on old ladies?’” according to the plea agreement. Antonio demanded D.C., who said he could not see, get into the officer’s patrol vehicle, pushed him inside and slammed the door on his foot.
In the plea agreement, Antonio said he turned off his lapel camera and, “I again pepper sprayed D.C. while driving him to the detention center.” The FBI interviewed Antonio on April 24 and he told agents he had been trained to use his pepper spray and Taser if someone was noncompliant and posed an active threat.
“I said the encounter with D.C. was neither of these scenarios,” according to the plea agreement.