Michigan man uses one-year-old boy as human shield, stabs two police officers | Law Enforcement Today

BAY CITY, MI - Eshawn K. Langston, 23, is now facing charges of assaulting police causing injury, assault with a dangerous weapon, and fourth-degree child abuse after he allegedly used his one-year-old son as a human shield and stabbed two police officers as they attempted to arrest him.

According to reports from mLive, Langston was arraigned in Bay County Court on December 12 following the incident a day prior that saw Police dispatched to his residence with a warrant for his arrest for the bond violation. Langston was under bond prohibition from contact with his son’s mother following an arrest for domestic violence and had violated that condition earlier in the day the outlet reported citing Court documents.

When police confronted him, Langston was in the driver’s seat of a vehicle with his one-year-old son in the passenger seat. The officers informed him of their probable cause to arrest him according to mLive and asked him to step out of the vehicle. He then refused and “was screaming and moving around in his car violently enough to shake the Jeep,” the officers wrote in their report.

The suspect reportedly told officers that they would need to break the vehicle’s windows and drag him out. He then grabbed his son and placed the child on his lap while screaming and cursing. Members of his family intervened and attempted to talk the man down to no avail.

When officers broke the rear passenger window Langston began to punch the window and door violently while “swinging his infant son around the front seat of his vehicle,” the outlet reported.

Local news outlet WJRT reported that video footage of the incident shows the Langston attempted to ram one of the police vehicles. Bay City Public Safety Director Caleb Rowell told the outlet that Langston “said multiple times, that they will have to kill him before they get him out of that car, there were several threats made."

While holding the child, Langston drew a pocket knife with a three-inch blade and stabbed the tow officers. "One officer was cut on his inner leg, the thigh, and the other one was the abdomen area," according to Rowell.

"I had the opportunity to watch the body camera video of the incident. It's very disturbing you can tell. It was a very volatile situation and the officers really did a great job dealing with what they had in front of them," he told reporters. Officers were able to successfully free the child and apprehend the suspect after a struggle. The child was not injured.

As for the officers wounded in the incident "They are both doing well, in good spirits, take a little bit to recover from their injuries but they are doing well," Rowell said.