TEXAS – The two women who are suing after they were subjected to a humiliating and invasive cavity search on a Texas roadside on Memorial Day last year have spoken out about their ordeal.
Brandy Hamilton, 26, and Alexandria Randle, 24, told reporters how they were ordered out of their vehicle, not permitted to put on clothes to cover the bikinis they’d been wearing at the beach that day, and given cavity searches right by the side of the road.
The disturbing video of the event, which was caught on the dashcam, captures one of the women asking in disbelief, ‘Are you serious?’ when the officers tell her they’re going to give her a cavity search.
The women are sharing new details about what happened to them that day.
Alexandria Randle still can’t believe what happened to her and her friend. She felt ‘violated’ and ‘embarrassed’ by the body cavity search on the side of a Texas highway after they were stopped returning from a weekend at the beach.
‘I couldn’t even imagine if this were to happen to… one of my little cousins… I just want this to be the last time this happens here,’ she told KHOU11.
Speaking about police searching people for drugs, Brandy Hamilton said, ‘If it comes to that, then take the person into jail, you don’t have to do it on the side of the road.’
‘It’s been traumatizing,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if I can trust the cops anymore, it’s just been very – a very horrific situation to me.’
The women are suing the Texas Department of Public Safety and the sheriff of Brazoria County, Texas, where the stop occurred.
Their lawyer alleges that the search was meant to humiliate them and was conducted without probable cause
The female officer who performed the invasive search, which included inserting a finger into the women’s vaginas, is accused of using the same pair of gloves to search both women.
The entire 40-minute traffic stop was caught on the trooper’s dashboard camera.
Attorney Allie R. Booker told MailOnline her client’s case is startling similar to a July 2012 case in Dallas in which DPS trooper Kelly Helleson aggressively searched Angel Dobbs and her niece, Ashley Dobbs – including giving them a body cavity search and not changing gloves between searching the two women.
Booker said a third case, that has yet to become public, bears the same hallmarks, as well.
‘How are these people behaving in the same manner, hundreds of miles away from each other. There’s got to be some factor at the DPS that makes these officers think they can do this,’ she said.
Miss Hamilton and Miss Randle were on their way home to Houston from Surfside Beach on May 28, 2012, when they were stopped for speeding by DPS trooper Nathaniel Turner.
Turner immediately asks both women to step out of their car. Both were wearing only their two-piece swimsuits from their time at the beach.
Ms Hamilton, the driver, asks if she can put her dress on to cover up.
‘Don’t worry about it. Come out here,’ the trooper tells her.
Turner says he can smell marijuana in the car and accuses the women of smoking and driving. He later claimed that he found a piece of a smoked marijuana blunt under the back seat of the car.
He then makes the two women sand on the side of a busy highway in their swimsuits while he calls for backup.
‘One of them has got her zipper open on her pants of her daisy dukes shorts – whatever they are,’ the trooper says on the radio.
Two more troopers show up – including Jennie Bui.
Bui, as trooper Turner explains, ‘is going to search you.’
‘I ain’t, because I ain’t about to get up-close and personal with your woman areas… she is going to put some gloves on,’ he says.
‘You’re going to go up my private parts?’ asks Hamilton, sounding bewildered.
Despite numerous pleas from the two women not to perform a body cavity search, Bui ignores them.
Both women can be seen with pained looks on their faces as the trooper probes their genitals.
Miss Randle sobs uncontrollably as she is probed.
At one point Turner says: ‘Don’t smoke weed in your car and you won’t have to go through this.’
Booker, the lawyer for the two women, said the behavior of the troopers was outrageous.
‘If the cavity search alone isn’t enough and say it’s their fault that you basically just sexually assaulted them – that’s humiliating,’ she said.
Turner later released both women and issued Miss Hamilton a citation fro possession of drug paraphernalia. She is still fighting the charges in court, though she contends the marijuana wasn’t hers.
Trooper Bui was fired last week by the DPS. Trooper Turner has been suspended, Booker said.
‘These police officers are here to protect and serve,’ Brandy Hamilton told KHOU11.
‘And they did not protect me at all. Not one of them.’
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