A Delco man says Sharon Hill police hit him with their car while taking him into custody
At the time, Stephen Bytheway was wanted in Montgomery County for allegedly masterminding a violent burglary in which police say he tortured a homeowner with a blow torch, court records show.
A Delaware County man has sued Sharon Hill police, saying officers hit him with a car and dragged him several feet while taking him into custody on an arrest warrant outside a home in the borough last year.
In a federal civil rights lawsuit filed this week, Stephen Bytheway, 42, said a group of officers used excessive force during the incident in March 2024, then ignored the pain he was experiencing as he sat for hours in a holding cell, and later instructed doctors at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital to “rush” his medical treatment.
The suit names as defendants three officers involved in the arrest — Detective Sean Johnson, Detective Vincent Procopio, and Officer Domenic Dellabara — as well as seven other officers it does not identify but says took part in the arrest.
Sharon Hill Borough Solicitor Kyle Miller did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The officers were pursuing Bytheway, of Essington, because he was wanted in connection with a violent 2023 home invasion in Springfield Township, Montgomery County. Police say he and four other men beat and tortured an elderly homeowner and burned him with a blowtorch as they searched for gold they believed he had in his home.
Bytheway, who investigators say was the mastermind of the plot, had been tipped off by the seller that the man had recently purchased gold.
His trial on charges of aggravated assault, robbery, and related crimes in that case is scheduled for Dec. 9 in Norristown.
Bytheway’s lawyer in the civil suit, Laurie Jubelirer, said those criminal charges were irrelevant to the misconduct he experienced at the hands of police.
“They should have told him when they saw him to stop and they were there to effectuate a warrant,” she said. “Instead, they overreacted and ran over him with a car and beat him up, when it could’ve been handled in a much more humane way without harming him.”
The officers charged Bytheway with flight to avoid apprehension and evading arrest. A criminal case on those charges is pending in Delaware County.
Johnson, the Sharon Hill detective, wrote in court filings that he was seeking to take Bytheway into custody on the Montgomery County warrant when he saw him leave a home on Clifton Avenue.
Johnson said he activated the emergency lights on his car and told Bytheway to surrender, the filings said, but instead Bytheway began to run.
In the lawsuit, Bytheway said the officers did not identify themselves as police and did not activate the emergency lights on their unmarked vehicle. Instead, the suit said, they drove the car toward him down a narrow alley and hit him, pinning him to the hood.
Bytheway had to cling to the car to avoid being dragged underneath its wheels, according to the lawsuit, and he was then briefly pinned between the police car and a parked car when the police car stopped.
Johnson and other officers then punched and kicked him as he lay on the ground before taking him into custody, the suit said. Bytheway said he suffered injuries to his left hip, knee, and leg, as well as bruising on his ribs, and has lasting neurological pain.