18-year-old girl files lawsuit after officer beat her to death in violent San Bernardino encounter

An 18-year-old woman is suing the city of San Bernardino and the San Bernardino Police Department, saying she suffered long-term injuries after an officer tackled a body to the ground.

Erin Cowser was 17 years old when the violent incident occurred outside the Food 4 Less store on West 2nd Street on May 21, 2025.

Officers responded to a 2 a.m. report of a man trespassing and someone actively fighting with other people inside the market.

Cowser confirmed that a group of teenagers beat up another teenager at the store. They allegedly attacked Cowher when she came out of the shop to seek help with her friends standing outside. After he left the store, he was detained by the police.

Cellphone video from a witness captured the moment she stood face-first against a police cruiser and partially handcuffed, before being lifted by the officer’s feet and slammed to the ground.

According to the lawsuit, body cam footage and witness video showed the officer approaching Cowher from behind, grabbing her bag, pinning her in the arm and slamming her face first into the concrete, causing her head to hit the pavement.

Bloodied and bruised, the teenager lost consciousness and was left with multiple injuries, including a brain injury with memory loss, deep facial lacerations that required stitches and permanent scarring, as well as wrist and back injuries, her lawyer said.

“He basically did a takedown maneuver, a hip toss that flipped Erin into the air, her legs flew over her head and she landed face-first, head-first on the concrete,” said Cowzer’s attorney, Tony Jarmilla.

The lawsuit claimed that, “despite obvious signs of severe head trauma and severe bleeding, officers allegedly delayed medical care.”

In the video, Cowher’s friends can be heard yelling for the officer to stop.

In a statement released shortly after the altercation, San Bernardino police said officers arrested Cowher on suspicion of trespassing and attempting to fight with others. The department claimed the juvenile “started pulling away” from the officer when a “takedown maneuver was used.”

The suit alleges that after the incident, the officers “falsely claimed that Cowher’s injuries were caused by other juveniles, repeated those false claims to his family while he was hospitalized, and continued the story internally. That even after an officer admitted to lying during a use-of-force investigation, the San Bernardino Police Department would not publicly correct the false account, the false truth in public.”

“I watched the video of how it actually happened, because I couldn’t understand how you could tell [the injuries] Happened in the store, but when you got him [police] Carr, he wasn’t bleeding yet,” said Cowher’s grandmother, Rhonda Jackson.

“I remember being scared — and then I don’t remember anything,” Cowser said. “I woke up sad, confused and what I later found out wasn’t true about what happened to me.”

Charges against Cowser were eventually dropped. After the violent encounter, the teenager said she was traumatized and suffers daily, both physically and emotionally.

“I have headaches almost every day,” she said. “I’m in a lot of pain.”

Cowser has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city of San Bernardino, the San Bernardino Police Department and two individual officers, alleging they used excessive force and tried to cover up their actions.

His attorneys said cell phone video and body cam footage captured the entire encounter and believed the video directly contradicted the police department’s account.

“It wasn’t a mistake – it was violence, followed by dishonesty,” Jarmila said in a statement. “A police officer took an unarmed teenage girl by the back of her hand and slammed her into the concrete like a rag doll. Then he lied. Even when the truth came out, the police department refused to correct the record. This case is about accountability and ending a culture of violence and exclusion of the truth.”

“I want somebody to be held accountable for what happened to me because in the end, I didn’t do anything wrong,” Cowser said.

KTLA reached out to the San Bernardino Police Department for a statement and was told the department cannot comment on pending cases. It also remains unclear whether the two officers named in the case are still on active duty.

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