The Bureau of Criminal Investigations office of the Virginia State Police in Salem is awaiting autopsy results and continuing its investigation into the death of a teenager who was struck by a police Taser in Martinsville last week.
An autopsy was to be conducted to determine the cause of death for the 17-year-old, who died Thursday night. He became unresponsive after Martinsville police officer R.L. Wray deployed a Taser in an effort to subdue the teen inside a duplex apartment at 307 Rives Road.
Tasers are electronic control devices used to subdue people. They are considered nonlethal, Martinsville Police Chief Mike Rogers has said.
Rogers has declined to identify the youth because of his age, but friends have identified him as Derrick Jones.
Lt. Tim Lyon of the Bureau of Criminal Investigations said he had no new information to release Monday.
“We’re waiting for official autopsy results as well as toxicology,” Lyon said, adding that he does not anticipate anything before next week. “Right now we’re not releasing anything,” due to the ongoing investigation.
Sgt. Robert Carpentieri of the state police said he did not know how often incidents of death or injury from Tasers are reported, but to his knowledge, “they’re few and far between,” he said.
Carpentieri said this is the first case he has heard about in which a person died after a Taser was deployed.
According to a report released last month by Amnesty International, a human rights organization, medical examiners and coroners have concluded that Taser shocks “caused or contributed to at least 50 deaths” in the United States between June 2001 and August 2008.
Those 50 people were among 334 who died after police deployed Tasers during the same period, according to Amnesty’s report. In most of those cases, coroners attributed the deaths to other causes, such as drug intoxication or “excited delirium,” the report said. It defined “excited delirium” as “a term often used to describe someone who is in an agitated or highly disturbed state.”
The Amnesty report cites a June 2008 study by the National Institute of Justice on deaths following the use of conducted energy devices (CEDs), the class of weapon that includes Tasers. According to Amnesty, that report “found ‘no conclusive medical evidence’ of a high risk of death or injury from the direct effects of Tasers or similar devices,” but “it stated that ‘Many aspects of the safety of CED technology are not well-known, especially with respect to its effects when used on populations other than normal healthy adults.’”
The NIJ study said the risk of death or injury associated with Tasers could be higher among children, the elderly, pregnant women, people with heart disease and other “at-risk” individuals, Amnesty reported.
When it issued its report, Amnesty International called on federal, state and local authorities to suspend the use of CEDs or, “at a minimum, limit their deployment to life-threatening situations.”
The Amnesty report acknowledges that other studies, some funded by the CED industry, have found the risk of these weapons to be “generally low” in healthy adults.
According to police accounts, the Martinsville teen was struck after Wray responded to the scene and saw evidence of what he believed was a home invasion. The officer entered the duplex and heard someone in its kitchen. He asked the person to come out so he could speak to him, police have said.
The teenager came out of the kitchen “and moved rapidly toward” Wray “in an offensive stance,” according to a city news release. The teenager also made comments that were “not too kind” to the officer, Rogers has said.
Wray deployed his Taser on the teenager, who then was subdued on the floor and handcuffed, police have said. Wray then dealt with another male teenager on the porch, whom he took into custody. When Wray returned to the 17-year-old who had been Tasered, he found him unresponsive, Rogers has said.
The officer called for rescue and administered CPR, but the teenager was pronounced dead at Memorial Hospital, Rogers has said.
Witnesses later said no home invasion took place.
Contrary to previous reports, the other teenager taken into custody that night, a 15-year-old, has not been charged in the incident, Rogers said Monday.
Rogers has said Wray was within the police department’s procedures for using Tasers when he deployed his. The officer has been placed on paid administrative leave.
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