Man, Target of Police Tasers, Dies at Hospital

A 35-year-old man died at County-USC Medical Center Tuesday about three hours after Los Angeles police used electronic Taser guns in an attempt to subdue him, investigators reported Wednesday.

Police said they were called to an apartment house on New Hampshire Avenue by residents who complained that a fellow tenant had been acting strangely--kneeling in a hallway, stabbing at the carpeting.

Officers said they found the man sitting on the front lawn, wearing a pair of swimmer’s goggles, frothing at the mouth and jabbing at the lawn with a kitchen knife in one hand and a screwdriver in the other.

The man was ordered repeatedly to drop the weapons “but appeared oblivious to the officers’ presence,” Police Lt. Charles Higbie wrote in his report. Higbie said the officers, suspecting that the man was under the influence of narcotics, decided to employ their Taser guns, devices that fire a barb that stuns the subject with a presumably non-lethal 50,000-volt charge.

Did Not Appear Effective

One officer fired his device at the suspect twice, “but it did not appear that the barbs penetrated the clothing or that the electrical charge was effective,” Higbie said. The lieutenant said a second officer fired another Taser shot, but “once again, the effects were minimal.”

The officers then knocked the weapons from the man’s hands with their batons, subdued him manually, handcuffed him, bound his legs with nylon restraint cord and placed him in the back seat of a patrol car. The suspect exhibited unusual strength, Higbie said, snapping the leg restraints, which had to be reapplied.

After psychological evaluation at the Police Department’s downtown headquarters, the man was taken to the medical center’s psychiatric ward. About half an hour later, the man complained of difficulty breathing and was transferred immediately to the emergency ward, where he died.

A preliminary autopsy report is expected today, according to the coroner’s office.

The dead man’s identity was withheld pending notification of relatives.