“You just slammed my head into the ground”, she says.
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Friends and family members gathered Saturday for Bland’s funeral. Reed-Veal also added, “My baby has spoken. She’s still speaking and no, she didn’t kill herself”.
The 28-year-old aspiring social activist was laid to rest in all white suit.
The Reverend Theresa Dear, Associate Minister at DuPage AME Church, says she does not believe Bland took her own life.
Others wore t-shirts with the hashtag – the words “Unite not incite”, on the back. The New York Times reports Bland was remembered by leaders as a smart, outspoken woman who once sang in the youth choir and participated in the church’s Girl Scout unit. We are not funeralizing a martyr or a victim.
As her loved ones await the autopsy results, they conducted a funeral service to celebrate her resilience in the blunder of heated race relations and police brutality in the Black community.
With that being said, the District Attorney reportedly will be treating the case as a murder investigation, in which the autopsy reports high levels of marijuana and the aforementioned 30 cut marks on her wrists. He said they were likely self-inflicted, weeks earlier.
The Texas Rangers and the FBI are investigating.
The group demanded justice and called for the trooper’s arrest. Many sang, clapped and danced after viewing Bland’s body.
Waller County, Texas prosecutor Warren Diepraam revealed that the cause of Sandra Bland’s recent death was suicide, CNN reported. Bland’s family has disputed the account that she committed suicide, and they reaffirmed their belief during the funeral services Saturday.
“She said, ‘He’s not answering, it’s going straight to voicemail”.
“Her objective was to stop all injustice against blacks in the South”, Ms. Reed-Veal said at the funeral.
(KHOU)- Newly released dash cam footage gives another glimpse into the moments after Sandra Bland was arrested. Others are saying the video footage had been tampered with.
Spencer Lee McCain, an unarmed 41-year-old black man, died on June 23 after being shot by three police officers at his home in Maryland, while a woman who said he had threatened to beat her was there with her two young children. She was jailed over the weekend, and was to be released on Monday on a $5,000 bail. It has resonated on social media, with posts questioning the official account and featuring the hashtags #JusticeForSandy and #WhatHappenedToSandyBland. Her family disputes that Bland could possibly have taken her own life. In one clip, she said she was holding “this telephone” that is “quite powerful”.
Bland was initially stopped for failure to signal a lane change.
Dashcam video shows the stop escalating after she was asked to put out a cigarette. She refused, and he told her she was under arrest.
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He threatened to shoot Bland with a stun gun unless she obeyed his order and said she kicked him during the tussle.
