Man beaten by Sheriff's deputies appears in federal court

Image 1 of 2

 A man who was severely beaten by two Alameda County sheriff's deputies in November and who was arrested by the FBI on Friday on undisclosed charges appeared in federal court in San Francisco today at a closed hearing.

The courtroom of U.S. Magistrate Sallie Kim was cleared and closed to the public before Stanislav Petrov, 29, was brought before Kim.

As of midday today, the federal case against Petrov remained sealed and the results of the hearing before Kim were not known.

A spokesman for prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office was not available for comment.

Petrov's mother, Olga Petrov of San Francisco, who was also barred from the hearing, said outside of court that her son is suffering from post-traumatic stress since the beating.

"He started becoming absolutely unpredictable" after the beating, she said.

She said Petrov has not received the mental health treatment he needs.

The mother also said, "My son was deliberately criminalized" unfairly by various law enforcement agencies leaking what she believes to be false reports of alleged offenses. She said she believes those reports have further traumatized her son.

"They took his soul," she said.

Petrov was beaten by two deputies with more than 40 baton blows on a street in the Mission District at the end of a car chase that began in unincorporated San Leandro on Nov. 12. A video of the beating has widely circulated online.

Petrov's mother and lawyers representing him in a complaint against Alameda County say he suffered several head injuries and permanent damage to his hands, so that he can no longer work as an auto mechanic.

On Friday, the FBI arrested Petrov and an unidentified woman at a house in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood of San Francisco.

On Saturday, 23-year-old Dana Rinta, a former girlfriend of Petrov's who had been missing for more than two weeks, walked into a police station in the city and said she and her 1-year-old daughter were safe.

Olga Petrov said she did not know anything about the house where Petrov was arrested.

Since the trauma of the beating, she said, Petrov's "habit was to live in multiple places. He had multiple ladies he was calling his girlfriend," she said.