Illegal strip search of Marine was 'terrifying, embarrassing and degrading'

In the video, three LaSalle County Sheriff's deputies can be seen throwing a woman onto a bench and then onto the floor of a jail cell and forcibly removing her pants as the woman - a Marine Corps veteran - screams loudly.

"What are you doing, what are you doing, what are you doing?" the woman yells in desperation during the strip search, which a newly filed federal lawsuit called "demeaning, dehumanizing, undignified, humiliating, terrifying, embarrassing, and degrading."

The lawsuit - which seeks more than $1 million in damages - claims the arrest that led to the search and the search itself were illegal. It also alleges deputies knew the actions were taken in error, so they tried to conceal the evidence of their misconduct by deleting a video of what happened.

Zandrea Askew, a 28-year-old woman who was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps in 2015, says that she was sitting in her parked car on a street in LaSalle County in the early hours of Jan. 20, 2017. The suit does not identify the city or town where she was picked up.

It was then, she alleges, that two LaSalle County sheriff's officers approached her and made her perform field sobriety tests, despite her showing no signs of intoxication and having no warrants for her arrest.

After passing the field sobriety tests, she was arrested on a charge of driving under the influence of drugs and was taken to a local hospital, the suit alleges. There deputies tried "to obtain a blood sample" from Askew with no legal justification, the suit says.

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