Posted on 09/19/2007 8:44:43 AM PDT by Cagey
CLAY COUNTY, Fla. -- A Clay County woman's family said it's seeking justice after their loved one died shortly after being shocked 10 times with Taser guns during a confrontation with police.
The family of 56-year-old Emily Delafield said it would take the Green Cove Springs Police Department to court, according to a WJXT-TV report.
In April 2006, officers with the police department said they were called to a disturbance at a home in the 400 block of Harrison Street just before 5 p.m.
In a 911 call made to the Green Cove Springs, Delafield can be heard telling a dispatcher that she believed she was in danger:
Dispatcher: And what's the problem?
Delafield: My sister is waiting on my property.
Dispatcher: Your what?
Delafield: My sister (inaudible) is on my property trying to harm me.
Officers said they arrived to find Delafield in a wheelchair, armed with two knives and a hammer. Police said the woman was swinging the weapons at family members and police.
Within an hour of her call to 911, Delafield, a wheelchair-bound woman documented to have mental illness, was dead.
Family attorney Rick Alexander said Delafield's death could have been prevented and that there are four things that jump out at him about the case.
"One, she's in a wheelchair. Two, she's schizophrenic. Three, they're using a Taser on a person that's in a wheelchair, and then four is that they tasered her 10 times for a period of like two minutes," Alexander said.
According to a police report, one of the officers used her Taser gun nine times for a total of 160 seconds and the other officer discharged his Taser gun once for a total of no more than five seconds.
A medical examiner found Delafield died from hypertensive heart disease and cited the Taser gun shock as a contributing factor, the report said. On her death certificate, the medical examiner ruled Delafield's death a homicide.
The family said it plans to sue the Green Coves Springs Police Department now that it has all the reports regarding their loved one's death.
"We're going to try to compensate the estate and the family and try to get justice," Alexander said.
He said he believes the evidence weighs heavily in favor of Delafield's family and that justice will be served.
"I think that this evidence is going to show, along with some of the evidence we've collected outside of here, that there is no reason Emily Delafield should have died that day," Alexander said.
He said he plans to file a notice to sue sometime before the end of the year.
Because everybody knows that it is impossible for anyone to ever get hurt while attempting to grab someone's arm on a backswing when they are armed with knives and hammers?
The same idiots who say just grab her arm would be saying "Why didn't they use a taser?" if the knife had injured or killed her while they were grabbing for it.
A good rap on the knuckles wold have caused her to drop the weapons. Or aim for the weapon to knock it out of her hand, or use it to push her arm behind her and wedge in behind the wheelchair.
There's plenty of ways a baton could have been used without weriously injuring her.
Or they could have waited till she tired herself out.
Not necesarrily, I served on a coroners jury in Illinois and we had only 4 choices for cause of death. Suicide, Natural causes, accidental and homicide.
Any death caused by the actions of another is a homicide. Thus you have justifiable homicide or negligent homicide etc. It doesn't mean murder.
I’m not for coddling criminals by any means, but tasering a fat wheelchair bound old lady? Come on, now.
Perhaps if they had cleared the area and had someone try to talk to her, it would have helped. IF she felt threatened, then removing the perceived threat would have helped. They only added to the situation by causing more commotion.
And you know that exactly how? The victim called the police because she was having a psychotic episode. Her family DID NOT call police.
It's really easy for folks to sit back and claim that they'd have handled things differently and, of course, much better.
While it's true that the lady didn't deserve to die, it's also true that this is another one of Those Articles, which are long on sob-stories proffered by the plaintiff in a lawsuit, and short on facts concerning why the defendants acted as they did.
I have a physical illness not a mental illness. Of course I would drop a weapon if I were in that situation as would almost anyone who is in their right mind.
But the woman in the wheelchair was mentally impaired and probably unable to comprehend the situation or the danger she was in because of having the knife. If the cops had not been so eager to use their taser toys they could have waited and watched to make sure she didn't hurt anyone, and eventually they would have had an opportunity to take the knife without seriously harming her. Saving a woman's life should have been more important than a few hours of the cops' time.
So tying up a few cops for 8 hours, which is almost certainly much longer than it would have taken to wait her out BTW, is not worth it to save a human life in your opinion? I hope to God you aren't still working in any capacity that involves the lives or safety of other people, because you obviously don't place much value on human life.
a classic Bond line from Goldfinger...
The fact she was too mentally ill to know to drop a knife instead of being tasered lends credence to the action. If she had cut someone, the cops would have been blamed for not stopping her.
Everyone is a great Monday morning QB
Well certain segments of the public are tired of police shooting unruly people.
We just had one of these nutbags kill 32 people. Pardon me for not warming up to them.
I read it the first time. Did that make it OK to whack him in the head with a phone because he was lying on the floor when you found him and he reacted violently when he was picked up? And of course I suppose it's also OK to lie about the cause of his head injury as your first post jokingly suggested.
Pardon me if I'm too direct with my criticism, but your entire attitude toward old and sick people just reminds me way too much of the poorly trained and uncaring personnel in nursing homes who were the cause of me taking my dad out of 3 such facilities and caring for him myself for the last year of his life. Becoming old and sick isn't a crime to be punished by so-called health care providers, as you may someday learn yourself if you live long enough.
An old sick lady in a wheelchair killed 32 people with a knife? I must have missed that somehow, because I'm sure it made all the nightly news programs.
You should take the “I am very pro life.” quote out of your profile.
Read the damn thing again. Sheesh
Sad. RIP.
No thank you. Leave your comments to yourself you ignorant knat. You are too dumb to even write a profile. When you grow up get back to us. Otherwise keep playing with the children.
And if you litigate the taser out of existence, as the baton has all but been litigated out of existence, we’ll have a lot more police shootings.
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