Video shows officer slamming a Black woman to the ground by her braids, which a witness said he tore out of her scalp

• A Louisiana deputy gripped a Black woman by the hair so hard that he tore out her braids from her scalp, a witness said, according to Nola.com.
• Witnesses said the deputy was unprovoked and video shows him slamming Shantel Arnold to the ground.

A harrowing video posted to Instagram shows a Louisiana officer pulling a Black woman down to the ground by her hair.

A witness to the incident, which happened on September 20, said the officer gripped Shantel Arnold's hair so firmly that several of her braids came out of her scalp, Nola.com reported.

The video shows the deputy gripping Arnold's wrist as she's thrown to the ground. He jerks her around and then grabs her by the hair before slamming her to the pavement. At the end of the video, the deputy appears to kneel on her back.

Just ahead of the incident, Arnold, 34, told the deputy that she had been attacked by a group of boys while walking down the street.

They slammed her to the ground while a crowd looked on, Nola.com reported. She reportedly tried to fend off the boys with a stick, which didn't scare them away. An older man who saw the incident chased the boys away.

Arnold stands at 4'8" and weighs 100 pounds. Her slight build and a missing eye from a car accident make her a target for neighborhood bullies, Nola.com said.

Then the deputy, whose name has not yet been released, showed up.

"I'm on my way home. I ain't make it all the way to the block, the police come out of nowhere, swarming, getting me like, 'Come here.' I'm like, 'What's going on? I just got beat up by two children, what ya'll doing?'" she said, according to a transcript of her conversation with an investigator obtained by Nola.com.

Witnesses said the deputy was unprovoked and exited his car and struck her down to the ground.

The officer, a deputy from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, is under investigation. JSPO, which did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, does not use body cameras.