WATCH: The investigation into the death of Sandra Bland is being treated as ” a murder investigation,” the Waller County, Texas DA said Monday evening.
HEMPSTEAD, Texas – A U.S. prosecutor said the death of a black woman whose family disputes authorities’ finding that she hanged herself in a jail cell is being examined as a murder investigation.
Attorney Elton Mathis said Monday that there are many unanswered questions about the death of Sandra Bland, who died three days after a confrontational traffic stop. Bland’s death comes after nearly a year of heighted national scrutiny of police and their dealings with black suspects who have been killed by officers.
READ MORE: Questions surround Sandra Bland’s death in Texas police custody
Authorities have said the 28-year-old woman hanged herself with a plastic garbage bag July 13.
It’s “much too early to make any kind of determination that this was a suicide or a murder because the investigations are not complete,” Mathis said.
He said he’s asked for extensive scientific testing, including for fingerprints and DNA, “so we can figure out and say with certainty what happened in that cell.”
Although a medical examiner has ruled Bland’s death a suicide, supporters insist she was upbeat and looking forward to a new job. Bland’s family and clergy members have called for a Justice Department probe, and an independent autopsy has been ordered.
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. Family members have said nothing in her background suggested she was mentally troubled, and at least one friend said she was just venting after a bad day.
Bland’s sister, Shante Needham, has said Bland called her from jail the afternoon after her arrest, complaining an officer had placed his knee in her back and she thought her arm had been broken. The Department of Public Safety has said Bland “became argumentative and unco-operative” during the traffic stop. Paramedics were called to the scene but Bland refused a medical evaluation, authorities said.
Bland “was very combative,” Mathis said. “It was not a model traffic stop … and it was not a model person that was stopped.”
A mobile phone video posted online purporting to include part of Bland’s arrest shows an officer pinning a woman to the ground with one knee. At one point the woman can be heard yelling that she can’t “feel my arm.”
“You just slammed my head into the ground,” she says. “Do you not even care about that?”
Public-safety officials have said the trooper who stopped Bland violated traffic-stop procedures and the department’s courtesy policy but have not elaborated. The trooper is on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation.
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