Natasha McKenna’s Hands Were Cuffed & Legs Shackled During Tasing As officers argue that unarmed Natasha McKenna died from “excited delirium” more questions are being asked about what really happened to the Virginia woman who was fatally tased. McKenna who was 5’3 130 pounds and mentally ill, was handcuffed and shackled when she was shot four times with a stun gun in February. She also allegedly had a mask over her face and her last words were “You promised you wouldn’t hurt me,” as six officers left her permanently incapacitated for not bending her knees to be strapped into a chair. S…M…F…H… The Washington Post reports: IT’S BEEN more than three months since a mentally ill woman, Natasha McKenna, died after she was shot four times with a Taser stun gun by a guard in the Fairfax County jail. Since her death on Feb. 8, county officials have offered repeated assurances that a full investigation is underway, and that the facts surrounding the guards’ struggle with Ms. McKenna — which was recorded in full on video — will be laid bare. To date, however, it’s remarkable how little discernible progress authorities have made in providing an accounting of the circumstances leading to her death. A new report by Human Rights Watch — “Callous and Cruel: Use of Force against Inmates with Mental Disabilities in U.S. Jails and Prisons” — documents the routine brutality exercised by guards who are untrained and ill-equipped to deal with mentally ill people, who make up enormous proportions of jail and prison populations. Jail and prison staff use “force in the absence of any emergency, and without first making serious attempts to secure the inmate’s compliance through other means,” according to the report, which details cases similar to Ms. McKenna’s, which unfolded when she resisted the guards’ attempts to remove her from her cell. In Ms. McKenna’s case, she had already been fully restrained — her hands and feet shackled — when a guard, frustrated that she would not bend her knees to be strapped into a chair, shot her repeatedly with his Taser. Ms. McKenna was not physically imposing. At the time she was shocked, she posed no threat to the guards, nor was there any risk she could flee. Taser’s user manual warns several times that repeated use of the weapon against a subject “could increase the risk of death or serious injury.” Despite that, she was shot three times in the weapon’s “drive-stun” mode, which the manual says is “for pain compliance only.” And she was shot once with the weapon’s electrical prongs, designed to incapacitate a subject. Ms. McKenna was incapacitated — permanently. She never regained consciousness after the struggle in the jail on Feb. 3 and died five days later. This news is absolutely terrible. There’s no way Natasha “crazied herself” to death, this was FAR from an accident.
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#BlackLivesMatter Natasha McKenna Was Cuffed & Shackled When She Was Fatally Tased
