Video showing Horry County Police officer holding down autistic child goes viral

The Horry County Police Department issued a statement Monday after a video went viral on social media showing an Horry County Police officer holding down a 10-year-old child with autism.

The video, originally posted by Sophia Marie, the child’s mother, to Facebook on Friday, shows an officer squatting over the child and holding his arms behind his back while the child is laying on his stomach on the side of the road.

The family was not available for an interview by publication.

The child can be heard grunting and asking for the officer to “get off” throughout the video. At one point, the child kicks his leg up at the officer, and a woman comes to hold his legs down.

A statement from the Horry County Police Department said the officer was initially sent to the scene on Thursday after a 911 caller said they observed a child walking alone near the road. When the officer arrived, he found the child walking in the direction of oncoming traffic on the Highway 31 overpass near Peachtree Road.

After the child did not respond to the officer’s initial questions, the officer placed the child in his patrol vehicle to ensure the child’s safety, according to the police department’s statement.

The officer later removed the child from the patrol vehicle after the child “began exhibiting behaviors that posed a risk to both the child and the vehicle,” HCPD wrote in the statement. The Horry County Police Department did not respond to The Sun News’ request for clarification about the specific details of these behaviors prior to publication.

Sophia Marie wrote in a comment on the video that the child was “pulled out of the safety of the back of the car after calling the cop an ugly name so poorly bruised ego and bad decisions put my son in danger.”

Throughout the encounter, the police officer kept the child physically detained to prevent the child from entering traffic or harming himself, according to HCPD.

In the video of the encounter, the woman recording can be heard telling the officer repeatedly that the child has autism.

The child was eventually taken to a medical facility for evaluation and was later released to his parent.