Texas senator to release video in jail death case

The investigation in the death of Sandra Bland, the 28-year-old African-American woman who allegedly hung herself inside a Texas jail cell last week, is now being treated as a murder investigation after relatives assured police that her suicide was “unfathomable”. But he said he welcomed the investigation.

Although a medical examiner has ruled Bland’s death a suicide by “self-inflicted asphyxiation”, relatives and other supporters insist Bland was in good spirits in the weeks preceding her death.

“That is her right”, the Rev. Jamal Harrison Bryant of Baltimore, who has been working to raise awareness of the case, said at a news conference in Texas this morning.

Last week, a bail bondsman also revealed Bland spoke to him over the phone about being bailed out shortly before her death.

Bland lived 1,000 miles away in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Illinois, but was in Texas because she was taking a job as a student ambassador to the alumni association at Prairie View A&M University. As more details become known and the independent autopsy report requested by the Bland family concludes her cause of death, more questions will certainly surface. She graduated from the historically black school in 2009.

Bland posted a video to her Facebook page in March, saying she was suffering from “a little bit of depression as well as PTSD”, or post-traumatic stress disorder.

The prosecutor in a Texas county where authorities say a woman hanged herself in a jail cell said that it is too soon to determine exactly how she died and that the ongoing case is being treated as thoroughly “as it would be in a murder investigation”.

The case has resonated on social media, with posts questioning the official account and featuring the hashtags #JusticeForSandy and #WhatHappenedToSandyBland.

Bland was arrested July 10 after a traffic stop and died three days later in her cell, sparking questions about the manner of her death and outrage.

Bland used the intercom in her cell to contact the jail’s main control room. After Bland questioned why she should have to extinguish her perfectly legal cigarette, which she was smoking inside her own vehicle, the footage reportedly shows the officer opening Bland’s door and trying “to force her to get out of the auto”. The hard drive containing the original video has been turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to examine for any manipulation. There were no records of a call being made, Cantrell said. He described the plastic garbage bag used as a ligature by extending his hands about 5 to 6 feet apart.

Cantrell, the local sheriff’s department investigator, said the video camera outside Bland’s cell was motion-sensitive, meaning it stops recording if nothing takes place after a certain amount of time.

Trash bags have been removed from all cells at the jail and inmates are being checked on hourly, according to the sheriff’s department.

“Sandra Bland was very combative”, the district attorney said. “It was not a model traffic stop … and it was not a model person that was stopped”.

The statement by the state trooper was released just one day after video from the arresting officer’s dash-cam was publicized. At one point the woman can be heard yelling that she can’t “feel my arm”.

Trooper Brian Encinia, 30, started with the Texas Department of Public Safety in January 2014, according to department spokesman Tom Vinger.

The trooper who arrested Bland is on administrative leave until there is an outcome from the investigation. Those who know her say she was anything but suicidal. “Do you not even care about that?”