Thursday, July 24, 2008

Some More Details

The blog Truth Not Tasers has archived some articles (here, here, and here) about the 17-year-old Winnipeg boy who died this week after being tased. This article has some especially relevant information:
The officers approached the boy, who police said was armed with a knife, in the alley behind the 800 block of William Avenue, next to the national microbiology lab.

Police said the boy refused the officers' demands to drop the knife, so one of the officers fired his Taser. Police would not say where the probes struck the boy or if he was zapped more than once.

The boy fell to the ground and was unresponsive, so the officers requested paramedics and tried to revive him. The boy was taken by ambulance to Health Sciences Centre, where he was pronounced dead shortly after the 4 p.m. incident.
So, the police won't say where the boy was hit with the taser darts or how many times he was tased. They don't even bother to offer the standard allegation that the suspect "charged" them with a weapon (another brief article states that the teen "brandished" a knife during repeated requests to drop it). The devil's in those missing details.

And get this, Taser International is offering to help Winnipeg police with the investigation into this death. I bet they'd love to help! What's that about a fox and a henhouse?