A 32-year-old man died in Coweta County as a result of 15 taser strikes and the crushing weight of a person on top of him, according to a Georgia death certificate.
At a press conference a week ago, where the family said they want the deputies held accountable, the man’s mother said, “We’re scared to death of law enforcement now.”
Chase Alan Sherman died in a hospital at 11:09 p.m. Nov. 20, after fighting with police officers on the side of I-85, near mile marker 56.
Two hours earlier, his mother called 911 frantically from inside the jeep with Sherman and his fiance. She cried on the phone, saying she feared her son would kill them all if they didn’t get help quickly.
She said her son had “ingested some kind of drug” and was suffering from a psychotic break, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported.
In the 9:07 p.m. call made by Mary Ann Sherman, she told the 911 operator that her son was “crazy, out on some kind of drugs.” She later said he had smoked “spice,” a type of synthetic marijuana.
“It messed his brain up,” she said.
“He’s hallucinating; we need help,” Mary Ann Sherman pleaded with the operator. “He’s going to kill us all if we don’t get help.”
During the 10 minute call, which was punctuated by the sounds of several people screaming, she said her son had already bitten his girlfriend “really, really bad” and needed to go to a mental institution.
The 911 call ended just as two patrol cars pulled in behind the rental car the family was driving.
When deputies arrived, they reportedly struggled with Sherman while attempting to subdue him.
Taser logs from the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office show two police officers, each armed with a taser gun, tased Sherman a total of 15 times.
The official, immediate cause of death, acording to the death certificate is “Sudden death during an altercation with law enforcement with several trigger pulls of an electronic device, prone positioning on the floor of a moto vehicle and compression of the torso by the body weight of another individual.”
Atlanta attorney L. Chris Stewart, who is representing the family, said even though Sherman was handcuffed during the incident, deputies applied so much pressure to his torso with their knees, that the force, along with repeated use of a Taser led to his death.
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