An Oklahoma City police officer is under investigation and on paid leave after releasing body camera footage showing him punching an elderly Vietnamese man to the ground during a traffic stop. The man suffered a brain hemorrhage and is still hospitalized after the incident.

The footage shows the Oct. 27 event that begins with Officer Joseph Gibson explaining to 70-year-old Lich Vu that he was ticketed for an improper U-turn.

There seems to be a language barrier between the two as they argue over whether Vu should sign the citation. Vu eventually leaves the car and the fight continues.

Gibson insists that if Vu doesn’t sign the ticket, he will be taken to jail.

“I’m ready to go to jail,” Vu said.

They continue to argue and Vu appears to tell Gibson to “shut up” as he taps the officer’s chest with the back of his fingers.

That causes Gibson to knock Vu to the ground.

A woman, who earlier in the video had identified herself as Vu’s wife, asks Gibson to call an ambulance as police continue to handcuff a seemingly unresponsive Vu.

Vu’s daughter wrote to Instagram that her father was frail and already in poor health before the banging incident – suffering from bone cancer – and that the force of the impact left Vu with a broken neck.

“This is not how you treat someone 5’3, 115 lbs with bone cancer after a car accident,” Teresa Vu wrote on Oct. 28, along with photos showing Vu’s head bloody, dented and bruised.

“Especially if English is their second language,” she added. “I will never forget this, especially if my father cannot recover and passes away.”

IN an update earlier this month, the daughter said Vu was still in the hospital on a tube and suffering from memory loss.

“He’s conscious now; he can speak and recognize people. Sometimes he gets frustrated because he can’t remember why he’s there or how he got there, which is understandable. He can’t swallow properly because of his fractured neck “, she wrote on Nov. 6.

“He still has some bleeding/blood left over from his brain bleed,” she said, adding that he had surgery scheduled for later this week.

The Oklahoma City Police Department said in a statement that an internal investigation into the incident was launched “immediately” and that Gibson, a six-year veteran of the force, would be on paid leave until the investigation was completed.

Speaking to Oklahoma City News 9 on Wednesday, Police Chief Ron Bacy said there was no timeline for when the investigation would be complete, but that officers were working quickly to reach a conclusion in the case.

“I think anyone can recognize that the video is disturbing, and we understand the community’s concern,” he said.

“As police chief, my job is to ensure a fair and thorough investigation to give due process to all parties involved,” Bacy said, dismissing concerns that it could be unfair to have officers investigating one of their own colleagues.

“It will be forwarded to and reviewed by a prosecutor’s office, which is completely independent of the police department, and they will make an assessment of it on their own,” he said.

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