Elderly deaf man tackled by sheriff’s deputy charged with resisting arrest

First, Tom Garro was beaten. Then he was handcuffed so tightly that his wrists bled. Now, the deaf senior citizen has been officially charged with a crime stemming from his violent arrest at the hands of a Pinal County Sheriff’s deputy in January.

On May 25, a month after a Phoenix New Times report on the encounter, the Pinal County Attorney’s Office filed charges in Pinal County Pioneer Justice Court against Thomas Garro, the 79-year-old deaf Lyft driver who was pulled over and roughed up by Pinal County Sheriff’s deputy Aaron McRae on Jan. 9 in San Tan Valley. New Times has also reported on the 911 call from Garro’s passenger, who told New Times she was worried McRae would kill her.

Garro, who has been deaf all his life, was taken to the hospital and released without charges in the immediate aftermath of the arrest. He is considering suing the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office and filed a $1.5 million notice of claim with the county on June 26. He now faces charges of passive resisting arrest and failure to comply with a police officer.

Garro’s civil attorney, Jesse Showalter, said he doesn’t think the timing of the charges is a coincidence. 

“We do our notice of claim, and then within days of the notice of claim, we find out that they’ve filed these criminal charges, which seemed to be frankly retaliatory,” Showalter told New Times. “They probably, by design, decided to try to get these charges filed before the notice of claim that they knew was coming.”

Garro’s summons was issued mid-June and arrived in the mail last week. If convicted, he could face up to six months in jail, a fine of up to $2,500 and up to 3 years of probation for the resisting arrest charge, which is a class 1 misdemeanor. The failure to comply charge is a class 2 misdemeanor and carries a maximum penalty of up to four months in jail, a $750 fine and two years of probation. Garro is due in court later this month. 

Pinal County Attorney’s Office spokesperson Christy Kelly said in an emailed statement that the office charged Garro “after a review of the facts, evidence presented, and the law.”

“When dangerous circumstances arise, officers are often required to make difficult decisions under rapidly evolving conditions,” Kelly wrote. “Our office recognizes the tremendous responsibility they carry and will always support law enforcement officers when they are forced to make lawful decisions to protect their lives or the lives of others.”

Pinal County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Joseph McCarthy declined to comment for the story because of the pending litigation. He referred New Times to a statement released by Pinal County Sheriff Ross Teeple last week in response to a New Times story about McRae’s record, which includes three civilian complaints during his 18 months as a deputy and other concerning interactions with residents that have not resulted in official complaints.

“I support my deputies,” Teeple’s statement read. “Their job is hard enough without getting investigated for every baseless complaint.”

McRae pulled Garro over while the latter was driving a Lyft passenger to Walmart. The two struggled to communicate and the stop quickly spiraled into McRae pinning the 5-foot-3 man on the ground and handcuffing him. His passenger, a 66-year-old woman named Joanne Joshua who was on her way to run errands, was so scared during the encounter that she hid in the back seat and called 911 on the deputy while he wrestled with Garro just outside the car. 

In an interview with New Times a few months later, Joshua said she’d thought she was next and that the deputy seemed angry from the moment he approached the window. She said he insisted that Garro could understand him even when she tried to intervene to explain that Garro was confused and deaf. Garro, who turns 80 in October and communicates only through American Sign Language or text, said he couldn’t understand McRae, who kept speaking to him despite his disability.

Garro was taken to the hospital in an ambulance after the traffic stop and then released to go home. He left the encounter with two civil citations, one for speeding and one for not having insurance. Both were later dropped after Garro proved he had insurance in court and after McRae failed to show up for a hearing about the speeding ticket.

There is no body-worn camera or dashboard camera footage of the incident because the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office does not provide them to their patrol deputies. A sheriff’s office spokesperson previously confirmed to New Times that McRae has not faced an internal investigation over the incident.

The way Garro was charged, with what is called a long-form complaint, is not uncommon, said Phoenix defense attorney Bret Royle, who is not involved in the case. However, it is uncommon for the charges Garro received. Long-form complaints, which law enforcement agencies submit to county attorneys to review and file, are often reserved for situations or crimes that require more evidence before the agency moves forward with charges. For example, they are used frequently in DUIs because police must wait for blood test results. Or maybe a police agency is obtaining surveillance footage.

But with charges like Garro’s, the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office presumably had everything it needed immediately to make a charging decision. It can write up the charges using the same form McRae used to issue Garro’s civil citations and make what is called a direct complaint to the court, bypassing the county attorney altogether. The timing could be a coincidence, Royle said, and the sheriff’s office and the county attorney could have a good reason for the delay. But absent an explanation, it doesn’t really make sense to him.

“It’s fairly uncommon to do it that way,” Royle said of using the long-form complaint for Garro’s charges. “It’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s uncommon. When you mix that with the idea that the long-form complaint happens to coincide with the filing of a notice of claim, it’s certainly suspicious.”

Royle said he doesn’t think the charges are very strong. Garro can’t fight the resisting arrest charge by arguing that the arrest was unlawful, but he can argue that the use of force was excessive. And for someone to obey a lawful command by an officer, they have to be able to understand it. Whether Garro understood what was being asked of him is ambiguous even in McRae’s own reports, Royle said.

“That’s before you take into the fact that the 911 caller is like hiding, clearly afraid of the police officer, going, you know, ‘My driver doesn’t know what’s going on,’” Royle said. “They seem like pretty weak charges to me.”

Showalter said he’s never had a client criminally charged with a long-form complaint months after an incident. Typically, defendants are charged the same day, and often those charges are ultimately dropped. That was the case with Tyron McAlpin, a Black man and another one of Showalter’s clients who faced an eerily similar situation at the hands of Phoenix police. 

In October 2024, two Phoenix police officers beat and tased McAlpin, who is also deaf and has cerebral palsy, because they mistook him for a shoplifting suspect. McAlpin faced felony assault and resisting arrest charges until ABC15 published body-worn camera and surveillance footage of the incident. The charges were dropped soon after. The officers involved were suspended, but the suspensions were canceled in May by the city of Phoenix’s Civil Service Board. McAlpin has an ongoing civil lawsuit against the department.