Report confirms that police killed Natasha McKenna with her hands cuffed and legs shackled.
Natasha McKenna initially cooperated with deputies, placed her hands through her cell door food slot and agreed to be handcuffed, the reports show. But McKenna, whose deteriorating mental state had caused Fairfax to seek help for her, then began trying to fight her way out of the cuffs, repeatedly screaming, “You promised you wouldn’t hurt me!” the reports show.
Then, six members of the Sheriff’s Emergency Response Team, dressed in white full-body biohazard suits and gas masks, arrived and placed a wildly struggling 130-pound McKenna into full restraints, their reports state. But when McKenna wouldn’t bend her knees so she could be placed into a wheeled restraint chair, a lieutenant delivered four 50,000-volt shocks from the Taser, enabling the other deputies to strap her into the chair, the reports show.
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Within minutes of being shocked by the Taser, McKenna stopped breathing. The reports show that jail deputies were unable to revive her using CPR and that her heart was stopped for about 20 minutes before paramedics revived her in the ambulance en route to Inova Fairfax Hospital. Her heart then stopped three more times over the next hour before she was stabilized, according to the sheriff’s deputies’ reports.
The reports show that deputies quickly placed a defibrillator on McKenna, but three times the machine advised “Do Not Shock,” which it will do when a heart has completely stopped, experts said, because an electric shock will not restart the heart.
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Numerous experts said the use of a stun gun on a fully restrained prisoner was an unreasonable use of force, particularly in a jail setting where a person is unlikely to flee. They also said Tasers are not recommended for use on the mentally ill, that even the Taser manufacturer warns against using them on people in a state of “excited delirium,” and that using a stun gun more than three times is thought to be above the threshold for use on a single person.
“She wasn’t a threat; she wasn’t going anywhere; she was restrained,” said Richard Lichten, a use-of-force expert and former jail official in Los Angeles. “It feels excessive, unnecessary and out of policy, based on what you’re telling me.”
(via clatterbane)
