‘I Was Scared for My Life’: Black Woman Body Slammed and ‘Tasered’ By Georgia Cop Who Was Once Charged with Murder and Has a Shocking Record of Excessive Force
A Georgia police officer with a troubled law enforcement history, including being fired for excessive force, being sued for arresting a man recording in public, and being charged with murder for killing a 911 dispatcher while working as a security guard, is once again accused of excessive force.
Manchester Police Officer Donovan Scott-Sinclair was captured on video body slamming, tasering and arresting a young Black woman on June 10 after he had pulled her over for not wearing a seatbelt.
Zykerria Bowles was charged with obstruction, battery on a police officer, possession of marijuana, disorderly conduct and criminal trespass damage to property.
On Friday, she joined officials from the local NAACP chapter in front of Manchester City Hall for a press conference joined by local politicians to speak out against the arrest, telling local media she felt “hurt” and “violated.”
“I was scared for my life out there, really,” Bowles said, according to WSB-TV.
But Manchester police said they have reviewed the footage and believe Scott-Sinclair has done nothing wrong, according to a statement posted this Tuesday on its Facebook page along with some police body camera footage. The post has since been removed.
According to the press release:
“This investigation revealed that there is no factual basis to support the allegations that Officer Scott-Sinclair acted inappropriately or applied physical force that was unreasonable in the apprehension and arrest of (Bowles). The injuries sustained by Bowles are consistent with someone who resists a lawful arrest by taking flight and being taken to the ground and then offering continued physical resistance during attempts to handcuff.”
Manchester police said Scott-Sinclair pulled Bowles over for not wearing a seatbelt at around 6:20 p.m. before noticing a passenger in the back seat lying down as if trying to hide. When the officer approached the car, he noticed a “strong odor of marijuana coming from the vehicle” and began questioning the woman in the back seat, who identified herself as Kionna Williams. But that turned out to be a fake name.
After Scott-Sinclair had all three women step out of the car, he began questioning the woman who had been in the back seat and discovered her real name was Lakeithia Hampton.
However, Bowles, who was sitting on a curb, continued to yell at the officer while he was questioning Hampton, which police say created a disturbance. Police say Scott-Sinclair then found a small container of marijuana, which was when he decided to arrest Bowles.
But police say she began resisting arrest, which is why he had to body slam and use a Taser on her, according to today’s press release.
Officers were attempting to effect an arrest on Zykerria Bowles for Possession of Marijuana, but Zykerria began resisting arrest and kicked Officer Scott-Sinclair in the chest causing his body-camera to fall off. Zykerria (Bowles) then punched Officer Scott-Sinclair in the face and causing damage to the sunglasses the Officer was wearing.
But it was only a matter of time before Scott-Sinclair would be accused of excessive force, considering his violent history during a six-year career where he worked for five law enforcement agencies before he was hired by Manchester Police in February 2023.
The 28-year-old son of a sheriff’s deputy in Bibb County, Georgia, began his career in January 2018 with the Fort Valley Police Department in Georgia where he was one of several officers who arrested a citizen journalist named Kennon Dunn in July of that year, resulting in a lawsuit.
The Fort Valley Police Department fired him in October 2018 for “repeated errors in excessive use of force,” according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, after reviewing his records from the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council (POST), the state agency that certifies police officers.
In January 2019, he began working for the Montezuma Police Department and was sued again for excessive force by a man named Stephen G. Wade for an incident that took place in April 2019.
Scott-Sinclair resigned a month later before working for the Marshallville Police Department, where he resigned after nine months.
During the time he worked for Marshallville police, POST decertified his law enforcement license by placing him on probation for two years, whereupon he was required to attend courses on the use of force, arrest procedure, and de-escalation options for gaining compliance, the Journal-Constitution reported.
It was during his two-year probation that he began working as a security guard at Midtown Daiquiri Bar & Grill in Macon, where he and other security guards got into an argument in the parking lot with a man named Devontae Tennyson in June 2020.
Tennyson, 25, who worked as a 911 dispatcher, was in possession of an AR-15, but it was later determined he was not wielding the firearm in a threatening manner before he was killed in the encounter. Scott-Sinclair was arrested for murder in connection with the incident, but the murder charge against him eventually was dismissed.
In August 2022, Scott-Sinclair began working with the Talbotton Police Department in Georgia, where he obtained the rank of sergeant but ended up resigning in June 2023. This was followed by a month of working as a reserve officer for the same police department. In February 2023, he was hired by the Manchester Police Department, his sixth law enforcement job during a six-year career that was interrupted by a two-year suspension.