Man in Medical Distress Dies After Police Shoot Him With Taser

According to KOMO 4 news (September 29, 2018) a Pasco, WA man has died just hours after a Kennewick police officer tried to use a stun gun on him during an arrest.

Police Sgt. Ken Lattin tells the Tri-City Herald that the unidentified officer arrived before paramedics for a call about someone who appeared to be in medical distress and saw the man had a knife.

Lattin says 27-year-old Nicolas Garza was acting abnormally and wouldn't drop the knife.

Lattin says the officer fired his stun gun but it didn't work properly or didn't fully connect.
Garza was transported to a hospital where he died late Friday.

Benton County Deputy Coroner Bill Leach says an autopsy is planned.

He died at the hospital hours later, said Benton County Deputy Coroner Bill Leach.
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In August 2017, Reuters found 1,005 people in the U.S. have died after police stunned them with Tasers. In the most thorough accounting to date of fatal police encounters involving the paralyzing stun guns, Reuters found that nine in 10 of those who died were unarmed and one in four suffered from mental illness or neurological disorders.

Was the Kennewick police officer justified in using a Taser on the man in the above news report? Yes probably. The man was holding a knife and couldn't be treated by paramedics until he was disarmed.

What is important to understand here is that while a Taser is generally non-lethal (every police officer who carries a Taser has also been shocked with it during training / certification) people do die from being shocked with a Taser. Tasers should never be used when lesser means are available - as we saw when a Taser was Used on 11-year-old Girl Who Stole Food From a Kroger Store.

Tasers are a less-lethal option for police, but we should not consider the Taser to be non-lethal since more than 1000 people have died after being "Tased" by police.