A young woman set out on what should have been an ordinary errand: she was following her boyfriend in her own car as the two drove to a body shop to repair a broken taillight on his vehicle. She was seventeen, still navigating the small indignities and freedoms of late adolescence, and she trusted that a police officer pulling over her boyfriend would be a routine event, no more than a brief interruption on the way to an appointment. Instead, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday, that drive ended in violence, chaos, and lasting trauma. The lawsuit names former Brunswick police officer Nathan Day, a second unnamed officer, and the town of Brunswick as defendants, and it accuses Day of using excessive and unprovoked force against the teenager, slamming her head into her car and onto the ground until she lost consciousness. At the time, she had done nothing to warrant such treatment, the filing says; she was waiting across the parking lot when Day ordered her out of her vehicle and attacked her. The lawsuit alleges that Day and the other officer then falsely arrested her without probable cause, treating her as a criminal when she was simply an observer following her boyfriend into a shopping center parking lot. The complaint paints a picture of a young life suddenly upended, a girl who left home expecting a minor automotive errand and ended up bleeding, handcuffed, and hospitalized. Now that she is an adult, she is speaking through the courts, and her lawyers say her injuries—including a head wound that required staples, a concussion, fractured feet, and seizures—will affect her for years to come.
The details of the alleged assault are disturbing, and the lawsuit offers a step-by-step account of how quickly a routine traffic stop devolved into brutality. The incident took place in the parking lot of the Cook’s Corner shopping plaza, a familiar gathering place in Brunswick, where police pulled over the boyfriend’s car. The teenager, who had been following him to a body shop, pulled into the same lot and waited at a distance, not interfering, not resisting, and not causing any disturbance. It was then, the lawsuit claims, that Day ordered her out of her vehicle and, without warning, used force so severe that she was knocked unconscious. The phrase “knocked her out” appears in the complaint alongside descriptions of her head being slammed into her own car and then into the pavement, a brutal sequence that left her with immediate and severe injuries. When she regained consciousness, she was in the hands of officers who arrested her for traffic violations—charges that were later dismissed in September, an outcome that underscores the lack of legal basis for her treatment. She was transported to the hospital still in handcuffs, an image that the lawsuit invokes to emphasize the absurdity and cruelty of her situation: a teenage girl, seriously injured, being processed as though she were the aggressor. The lawsuit says she suffered a traumatic head wound that required staples, a concussion that could have lasting neurological consequences, fractures in her feet, and, in the days and weeks that followed, seizures that terrified her family and required further medical attention. For a young person with her whole life ahead of her, the physical pain was only part of the damage; the emotional and psychological scars of being attacked by a police officer, someone whose job is supposed to protect the public, are impossible to measure.
Day’s attorney, Marc Beaudoin, has pushed back against the lawsuit’s version of events, offering a very different narrative that portrays the encounter as a routine arrest that went wrong only because the teenager refused to cooperate. According to Beaudoin, Day asked the girl multiple times to come over to him because he intended to issue her a ticket for using her cellphone while driving. When she refused, he approached her and began to place her in handcuffs, at which point she allegedly tried to move away and kicked him in the knee. The attorney claims that Day did not use excessive force and that the girl’s injuries were “inadvertent and due to her own refusal to comply.” This explanation, which frames the officer’s actions as reasonable and the teenager’s behavior as the cause of her own injuries, sits in stark contrast to the lawsuit’s allegations of an unprovoked attack. The two accounts could not be more different: one describes a young woman minding her own business in a parking lot, suddenly ordered out of her car and assaulted; the other describes an officer trying to perform his duties, confronted by a defiant teenager who resisted arrest and caused her own harm. The court will ultimately have to weigh these competing stories, but the lawsuit emphasizes that even if the cellphone ticket was the reason Day approached the girl, it does not justify slamming her head into a car and knocking her unconscious. A traffic citation, no matter how valid, should never escalate into a violent attack that requires staples in a young woman’s head. The attorney’s defense also raises questions about proportionality and training: even under his own account, a teenage girl who refused to walk over to an officer ended up with serious injuries, which suggests that something went deeply wrong in the interaction.
What makes this case even more troubling is the fact that Nathan Day was no stranger to disciplinary trouble. Long before the alleged assault, the Brunswick Police Department’s own records showed a pattern of behavior that should have raised red flags. According to department records obtained through a public records request, Day was formally disciplined three times before the incident: once in September 2023, once in July 2025, and once in August 2025. The August 2025 incident is particularly striking because it reportedly involved Day tackling a suspect, an action that led to discipline and required him to complete remedial training. The other two disciplinary reports alleged that Day drove a police cruiser and pursued another vehicle in ways that violated department policy, suggesting a reckless disregard for safety and rules. In other words, Day had a demonstrated history of misconduct and poor judgment, yet he remained on the force, entrusted with a badge, a gun, and the authority to make split-second decisions that affect people’s lives. The lawsuit argues that the town of Brunswick was aware of this escalating pattern and failed to take meaningful action. Instead of firing Day or imposing increasingly severe penalties, the department apparently allowed him to continue serving, which the lawsuit claims set the stage for the violence against the teenager. This is not just a case about a single bad officer, the complaint argues; it is a case about a system that protects its own, overlooks warning signs, and waits until someone is seriously hurt before asking hard questions.
The broader implications of the lawsuit extend far beyond Nathan Day. The teenager’s attorneys have accused the town of Brunswick of demonstrating a deliberate indifference toward reports of officer misconduct, a phrase that carries significant legal weight in civil rights cases. They argue that the police department’s failure to discipline Day for his earlier infractions was not an isolated oversight but part of a broader culture of leniency and inaction. In a joint statement, the plaintiff’s lawyers said, “While Nathan Day’s actions last December are at the heart of this suit, this case is also about the lack of discipline in the Town of Brunswick’s police department, which allowed Mr. Day to stay on the force despite repeated flouting of the Constitution and departmental regulations.” This statement reframes the lawsuit as a call for systemic accountability, not just individual justice. It suggests that the girl’s injuries were not an accident or a one-time lapse in judgment but the predictable result of a department that tolerated escalating misconduct. The town, in this view, failed the teenager long before she ever entered that parking lot, because it failed to hold Day accountable for previous behavior. The lawsuit asks the court to see the pattern: a young woman followed her boyfriend to a parking lot, an officer with a history of disciplinary issues approached her, and within minutes she was unconscious on the ground. It was, the lawyers argue, an outcome that could have been prevented if the town had done its job.
As the legal process unfolds, the human stakes remain front and center. Day was charged with Class D assault in March, a misdemeanor, and has pleaded not guilty; he waived arraignment and is fighting the criminal charge. Brunswick Police Chief Scott Stewart confirmed that Day is no longer with the department, though the exact circumstances of his departure were not detailed. For the young woman at the center of this case, her life has been permanently changed. She was a minor at the time of the assault, and the Portland Press Herald has chosen not to identify her because of that, but she is now an adult and is pursuing justice on her own behalf. Her lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages, attorney’s fees, and a jury trial, which means her story will be heard in a public courtroom. No amount of money can erase the memory of having her head slammed into a car, or the fear that comes with seizures after the fact, or the profound betrayal of being harmed by someone sworn to protect her. But the lawsuit is not only about compensation; it is about accountability, transparency, and the hope that Brunswick’s police department will never again allow an officer with a record of escalating misconduct to remain in a position where he can hurt someone else. The town of Brunswick now faces the difficult task of answering for its actions, explaining why Day was allowed to stay on the force, and confronting the uncomfortable possibility that his continued employment was not a mere oversight but a failure of leadership. In the end, this case is a reminder that behind every legal complaint is a real person whose life was overturned in a single, terrifying moment—and that the pursuit of justice is about much more than the outcome of a trial.