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BART Settles Case With Drunken Passenger Hurt During Arrest For $1.35 Million

OAKLAND (KPIX 5) -- BART has agreed to pay $1.35 million to a drunken passenger who was body-slammed by transit officers trying to restrain her. The impact broke several bones in Megan Sheehan's face.

It happened in 2014 at the Lake Merritt BART station in Oakland. Sheehan admitted she was intoxicated after a night of heavy drinking. Officers arrested her on suspicion of intoxication and resisting arrest.

Sheehan insists she did nothing to justify what happened later at the Santa Rita jail.

Video showed a BART officer slam her face first into the floor. The officer said Sheehan turned towards him violently and punched his face. In his report, he said he used an "armbar" to protect himself and "guided her to the ground."

Sheehan said the video told a different story and filed a civil lawsuit, claiming the officers used excessive and unreasonable force.

"I had a gash above my left eye. I had a few stitches there. I had four broken bones around my orbital socket and stitches in my lip," she said. "They knocked out a tooth and chipped another one."

BART says it assumes all responsibility for what happened to Sheehan and released a statement:

'Over the past six years the BART Police Department has undergone tremendous organizational change and has worked tirelessly to reshape and reform its approach to training and policing to better meet the needs of the communities BART serves.'

BART has resumed its internal investigation into the incident. So far, it has not yet been determined what will happen to the officers involved.

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