Earlier today, Sandra Bland’s funeral was held in Willow Springs, Illinois.
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Now, with her mugshot circulating, debate has erupted over whether Bland might actually be dead in the photo and whether the potentially fabricated image is part of a cover-up for some harm that came her way. She acknowledged the attempt upon her admittance to the Waller County Jail – but officials failed to contact a crisis center, which they are required to do by law, if a new inmate exhibits signs they might be suicidal.
When Sandra Bland died in a small Texas jail last week, she became just the latest name on a long list of inmates whose deaths were determined to be suicides. She was found dead in her jail cell as hundreds of protesters gathered in the US state of New Jersey to campaign against police brutality and racial injustice.
The majority of people attending Bland’s funeral Saturday had never met her. Yet mothers stood in line outside the Lisle church for almost an hour under the unforgiving sun, a thick layer of sweat forming on their foreheads and those of the crying infants they held in their arms. They celebrated her life with words and songs of praise, and her mother danced in the church aisle with her arms raised.
“There were no bite marks or other injuries on her face, lips, on her tongue, which would be consistent with a violent struggle”, he stated, adding that examiners did not find any damages to Bland’s trachea and esophagus. ‘But I do know she didn’t have to die. Critics have accused Waller County officials of trying to smear her by implying that cannabis use affected her mental state, possibly prompting her to asphyxiate herself using a plastic bag in her cell.
Bland’s death while in custody has resonated throughout social media and it has been grouped along with a list of US cases involving confrontation between blacks and police in the previous year.
Bland had spoken out about that issue and others in a series of videos she posted online this year with the hashtag “SandySpeaks”.
Mourners at Saturday’s funeral wore T-shirts with the tag.
One such conspiracy theory centered on a video of an officer dragging what looks to be a lifeless body of a woman out of a auto.
In addition to hundreds of funeral mourners, a myriad of people took to Twitter to express their anger about the entire situation.
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Sandra Bland death investigation By the time the officer pulls up, Bland is already in the back of the patrol vehicle of the female Prairie View officer who responded to Trooper Brian Encinia’s call for backup. But Encinia wrote in the arrest report she had swung her elbows and kicked him, saying overall she was being “combative and uncooperative”.
