Local News in Brief : Stun Gun Episode Told

Jaime Ramirez, 18, testified Tuesday that two Huntington Park police officers tortured him with a 50,000-volt stun gun in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to confess to stealing stereo parts.

He said officers William Lustig, 32, and Robert Rodriguez, 26, burned his legs several times while he sat handcuffed in the back of a police car in November, 1986.

“I saw like lightning before my eyes and it (the stun gun) was crackling. . . . I could not keep my legs still. . . . I was feeling the pressure in my heart. I could not breath freely. I was screaming for them to stop,” Ramirez testified in Superior Court. He since has admitted stealing the stereo parts.

Lustig and Rodriguez, who have been fired, are on trial for beating a person and causing great bodily injury, a felony, and one count of inhumanely treating a prisoner, a misdemeanor. If convicted, they could be sentenced to as much as six years in prison.