Tennis

Tennis coach uses Stand Your Ground law to defend hitting 5-year-old

A tennis instructor in Florida busted for child abuse after hitting a 5-year-old boy with a racket wants charges against him dismissed under the state’s Stand Your Ground self-defense law.

Osmailer Torres, of Miami, was charged with third-degree child abuse in August 2016 after police said he took the boy’s child-sized racket and struck him with it while at a playground at a church in Miami. Surveillance video obtained by the Miami Herald shows Torres, 30, whacking the boy and then leading him away from other children, leaving him with injuries to his right arm and his eyebrow.

But in a motion seeking statutory immunity from prosecution, an attorney for Torres claims his client was simply protecting his other students at the time.

“Immediately prior to the alleged incident, Mr. Torres had to separate the child from other pupils to avoid further injuries to those other students,” attorney Eduardo Pereira wrote in the motion. “When Mr. Torres separated the alleged victim (as captured on CCTV), the alleged victim returned with his racquet in the air and was poised to strike again against the other students and Mr. Torres.”

Then, in an attempt to protect himself and other students, Torres “acted quickly to remove the weapon” from the boy’s hand while moving him away from other children.

“The video shows that during this process the alleged victim’s own racquet may have come in contact with the alleged victim’s arm,” the motion continues. “This is the only contact alleged by the State and is not subject to prosecution for the reasons stated below.”

The motion then cites Florida’s passage of the “Stand Your Ground” law in 2005.

“In this case, Mr. Torres defended himself and others during and immediately after the commission of several violent acts perpetrated by the alleged victim,” according to the motion. “Mr. Torres responded in naturally, proportionately and in defense of himself and others to the action perpetrated by the alleged victim.”

Pereira told the Miami Herald that Torres actually had no idea that his racket struck the boy.

“This was always viewed as an accident by the child and the school staff but is being treated as something more for unknown reasons,” Pereira told the newspaper.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, are disputing that self-defense claim, claiming that the boy never approached Torres or other children in an “aggressive manner” and that the child later reported that he didn’t believe Torres hit him accidentally.

“It is the state’s position that [Torres] was not acting under the threat of imminent threat or danger to himself or others, and this court should therefore deny defense’s motion for statutory immunity,” Assistant State Attorney Gabriela Plasencia wrote in response to Pereira’s motion.

A judge will consider Torres’ claim at a hearing early next year, according to the Miami Herald.

Meanwhile, in an email to The Post on Wednesday, Pereira claimed that the case is not about self-defense, arguing that Florida’s immunity statute is often mistakenly referred to as simply a self-defense law.

“Here it is about seeking immunity from prosecution because the injury was not intentional and occurred in the course of non-criminal behavior, in this case separating children who were roughhousing with their tennis racquets,” Pereira wrote in an email. “Our hope in filing this motion is to avoid having to make a child or parent sit for a deposition or worse, having to bring a child into a courtroom setting unnecessarily. By filing this motion, we are asking to the court to rule that no criminal prosecution can be brought — without having to litigate the matter or bring the child in for a trial.”