Man Dies After Being Tased 50 Time By Police

Video showing two Oklahoma police officers using a stun gun against a non-combative man more than 50 times before the man was choked and later died was released on Tuesday by attorneys representing the man’s family.

The video shows Jared Lakey, 28, naked and lying on the ground in Wilson, a small town about 20 miles west of Ardmore, as the officers, Joshua Taylor and Brandon Dingman, repeatedly use stun guns against him over a span of about nine minutes on July 5, 2019.

Lakey died on July 6, 2019. Both officers were charged earlier this month with second-degree murder.

In the video, the officers repeatedly tell Lakey, who appears confused and disoriented but never combative, to put his hands behind his back. But they do not approach Lakey until the end of the video after a local deputy has arrived on the scene and put Lakey in a chokehold as he’s being handcuffed.

The officers later tell arriving first responders that Lakey had removed the stun gun prongs from his body and “fought and kicked” with officers, though that is never shown in the body camera or dashboard camera recordings. The video also shows the officers telling first responders that Lakey “must” have been on PCP, a powerful hallucinogen with a reported side effect of sometimes allowing users to withstand severe injuries.

However Lakey’s autopsy report revealed no drugs in his system, said Spencer Bryan, an attorney representing the Lakey family. And the video shows the officers repeatedly using stun guns on Lakey, often as he lay still on the ground.

“For lack of a better word it’s essentially torture,” Bryan said. “There’s no reason you should be Tasing someone for four minutes in a nine-minute encounter.”