HIV-positive man who bit officer gets 15-year sentence
The Miami Herald reports: For threatening to kill with his illness and then biting a Miami police officer, HIV-positive drifter Johnson Jamerson will serve 15 years in prison, a judge ruled yesterday.
Jamerson, 35, was convicted in June of attacking Miami Officer Matthew Hall while trying to escape a police bus bound for jail. He bit through Hall's pants, drew blood and caused a permanent bruise.
Hall was not infected, but it was eight anxious months before he got the final test results.
He had to avoid intimate "contact with his wife or children for fear he could severely affect them," Miami-Dade prosecutor Ankur Sevak told Circuit Judge Daryl E. Trawick.
Jamerson, a former furniture delivery man diagnosed as a schizophrenic, was arrested in January 2008 on trespassing charges after he was found sleeping under the Interstate 395 bridge at North Miami Avenue.
On a police bus later, Jamerson slipped out of his handcuffs. Hall grappled with him.
While they were struggling on the ground, Jamerson yelled that he had HIV -- the virus that causes AIDS -- threatened to kill Hall and then sank his teeth into the officer's right shin, police said.
Jamerson, 35, was convicted in June of attacking Miami Officer Matthew Hall while trying to escape a police bus bound for jail. He bit through Hall's pants, drew blood and caused a permanent bruise.Hall was not infected, but it was eight anxious months before he got the final test results.
He had to avoid intimate "contact with his wife or children for fear he could severely affect them," Miami-Dade prosecutor Ankur Sevak told Circuit Judge Daryl E. Trawick.
Jamerson, a former furniture delivery man diagnosed as a schizophrenic, was arrested in January 2008 on trespassing charges after he was found sleeping under the Interstate 395 bridge at North Miami Avenue.
On a police bus later, Jamerson slipped out of his handcuffs. Hall grappled with him.
While they were struggling on the ground, Jamerson yelled that he had HIV -- the virus that causes AIDS -- threatened to kill Hall and then sank his teeth into the officer's right shin, police said.
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