‘It was so surreal’: Georgia student punched and kicked by officers speaks

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Demetrius Hollins, who this week was punched then kicked by police officers, said that he wanted to record the encounter but was unable to.

On Friday, Hollins told NBC’s “Today” show that during the encounter with police, he had been hit in the face and taunted that there was no video evidence to prove it.

“He start(ed) shoving me in my car and telling me that I was never going to have a video, that I was never going to make the phone call to my mom,” Hollins told NBC News. “When I had my hands up, that’s when he punched me in the face.”

“It was so surreal,” Hollins said of the attack.

— Students suspended over promposal joke about ‘picking cotton’ —

Sgt. Michael Bongiovanni hit Hollins, and then Officer Robert McDonald kicked him in the head while he was handcuffed. Hollins was not able to record, but on Thursday, separate videos of the two officers emerged, backing up his story.

“If there were no cameras, they would have gotten away with it,” Hollins’ lawyer Justin Miller told NBC News, adding that “they would have painted him as the bad guy, arrested him, brushed it under the rug and probably did it to them again the next time they saw him.”