60 year-old mentally ill man dies in isolation hours after police tasing

http://www.nationofchange.org/sixty-year-old-mentally-ill-man-dies-isolation-cell-hours-after-police-tasing-1347895453



A 60-year-old man who had long suffered from bipolar disorder died in a jail cell Friday evening, hours after police tased him and placed him in isolation. Bill Williams was arrested for shoplifting at a gas station in Snohomish County, Washington. He had recently stopped taking his medication, and his family said they called the police and his case manager the previous week saying he needed to be hospitalized, but were ignored. KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reports:

“His life was so difficult. Anyway for it to end like this, and die alone in his cell, is just incomprehensible,” said Williams’ daughter, Trina Blau. “There’s a hospital right there where they could have shot him up with a sedative to figure it out. Instead, they shot him with a Taser and he’s dead.”

Surveillance video from the convenience store showed Williams jumping over the counter to grab cigarettes, and then come back for a six-pack of beer. . . .

Williams’ family said he was off his medication, and Blau called 911 Thursday trying to get him taken to the mental hospital.

“They talked to him for 15 seconds. If they would have talked to him 10 seconds longer, they would have seen he wasn’t lucid,” said Blau. “I firmly believe my dad would be alive if they would have just taken the time to listen.”