DECATUR, Ga. -- The mother of a toddler, badly injured by a flash grenade, has some harsh words to a former Habersham County Sheriff's Deputy.
Speaking via web cam from her family's home in Wisconsin, Alecia Phonsevanh says the recent federal charges against Nikki Autry are a step in the right direction.
"I don't want to sound mean," Phonsevanh said, "but she really ruined a family's life. Just by not doing her job correctly."
On Wednesday, a federal grand jury indicted Autry on charges of providing false information in order to obtain a search warrant.
In May of last year, deputies executed a no-knock warrant and threw a flash grenade into the house. It landed in Bou Bou's playpen, badly injuring him.
Bou Bou has had a dozen surgeries and will need more throughout his life.
"Some of the surgeries he's looking at later on in life could be a little more devastating to him, maybe a little tougher," Alecia said, "but we are not gonna let anything prevent us from giving him the life he deserves."
Autry told a GBI investigator that a criminal informant told her a large shipment of drugs would be at the house the Phonsevanh's were staying.
"At that point we were thinking there's gonna be a load of dope there at his residence," Autry told an investigator in an audio recording obtained by 11 Alive.
Autry says her CI had bought drugs at the house. She told a judge there was heavy traffic in and out of the home.
But according to federal prosecutors those were all lies. Now she's facing four federal civil rights violations.
Autry's lawyer says she's being made the sacrificial lamb and that she did not intentionally mislead anybody.
