Sandra Bland‘s family is calling for a renewed investigation into her arrest and death after a 39-second video from her phone surfaced showing the state trooper aggressively threatening her with a stun gun.
The 28-year-old activist was taken into custody in Texas for a traffic violation and was found hanging in her cell three days later. Her death was ruled a suicide, however, the public believed it was a homicide. The fact that the police were aware of the existence of the cell phone footage and didn’t make it known to the public opens old wounds in the Sandra Bland case.
The video below was unearthed during an investigative report by Dallas television station WFAA that included interviews with Ms. Bland’s family and supporters, who accused officials of concealing vital information that can help their case.
The Texas Department of Public Safety claims the cellphone footage was referred to “multiple times” in the report, however, the only footage that the public has seen is the footage from the dash cam.
“What the video shows is that Encinia had no reason to be in fear of his safety,” Cannon Lambert, who represented the family in a $1.9 million legal settlement, said in a telephone interview. “The video shows that he wasn’t in fear of his safety. You could see that it was a cellphone, He was looking right at it.”
