FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — A former Chowchilla police officer accused of kidnapping and child abuse in Fresno County appeared in court on Friday.<\/p>\n
Douglas Divine has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him. He faces two misdemeanor counts of child cruelty against his girlfriend’s 12-year-old and 15-year-old children, as well as two felony counts for allegedly kidnapping and falsely imprisoning her 22-year-old son.<\/p>\n
“He held me down and then hit me like four more times,” Matthew Silva, the 22-year-old, said.<\/p>\n
For more than an hour, Silva detailed the alleged abuse from last June. He testified that Divine had a gun and put him in handcuffs.<\/p>\n
“I don’t feel like I did anything wrong to be handcuffed, so I was resisting as much as possible,” Silva said.<\/p>\n
Silva testified that the incident began with a verbal argument and quickly escalated.<\/p>\n
He said Divine then ordered him and his younger siblings into a car and took them to their grandfather’s house, where Silva yelled at a passerby to call 911.<\/p>\n
“I couldn’t really agree,” Silva said about the car ride. “I already had handcuffs on me.”<\/p>\n
The young man said his mother, who is a KFSN-TV employee, was on the phone with Divine during part of the incident.<\/p>\n
“He said, ‘So I put him in cuffs.’ And the first thing I hear is, ‘Good,'” Silva testified about his mother.<\/p>\n
The defense on Friday suggested Silva has a history of drug use, seeming to argue Divine might have feared for his safety.<\/p>\n
“You don’t recall Mr. Divine telling you that he wasn’t going to take the handcuffs off because you already attacked him?” defense attorney Marshall Hodgkins asked.<\/p>\n
Divine — a one-time Fresno police officer — was the recipient of the department’s Life Saving Medal in 2020. He was with the Chowchilla Police Department at the time of the alleged crime, but was later terminated.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the 22-year-old testified that during the incident, Divine hit him so hard that he lost vision.<\/p>\n
“I saw flashes, I guess, when my eyes were closed,” Silva said.<\/p>\n
The judge ruled there is enough evidence for prosecutors to take the case to trial. Divine is ordered to return on May 18.<\/p>\n
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