Man zapped twice with Taser in Fort Pierce dies

By Allyson Bird
Palm Beach Post
Feb. 25, 2006

FORT PIERCE — Seeing her 48-year-old son with blue toes, a lifeless face and tubes coming from his body was a lot for Mary Hair to take in. When a neurologist told her Thursday afternoon that Samuel Hair, her "Sammy," wasn't showing any brain activity, it was all she could stand.

Mary Hair told doctors to pull the plug on Samuel's life support at 9:25 a.m. Friday, and he died shortly afterward.

Samuel Hair, who used a pacemaker, was shocked with a Taser on Tuesday night after he became unruly in the emergency room at Lawnwood Regional Medical Center and Heart Institute.

He stopped moving after being hit twice with the weapon, which the manufacturer advertises as a nonlethal law enforcement tool.

The Treasure Coast Medical Examiner's Office will perform an autopsy to determine the cause of death. The company that makes the Taser said the gun could not cause the death. Police agree but are awaiting the results of the autopsy and their investigations.

Mary Hair said her son's criminal record — which includes charges of sexual assault, aggravated assault with a weapon and drug violations, according to state records — is irrelevant to the situation.

Samuel Hair's family said he was mentally ill and that he called 911 Tuesday night from 1303 N. 19th St., asking for help. The Fort Pierce address was his childhood home, which he and his mother were planning to return to after finishing business in their current home in Miami.

"I just want to go to mental health," Hair pleaded on the 911 tape. "I don't know my address."

After unsuccessfully answering questions on the phone, he repeatedly said, "I know what to do," before hanging up.

Police reached him and took him to Lawnwood for his own protection and that of his family. When he got there, he became upset, and two other officers came to help restrain him.

Police said he kicked one officer in the groin before he was hit with the Taser. His family said the way Hair responded when he saw his aunt probably upset officers.

Hilda Foxx didn't expect to bump into Hair in the emergency room, and he went to her for comfort when he got upset, she said. Family members suspect police thought Hair was harassing a stranger because Foxx said he wasn't making sense in the emergency room.

Officer Edwin Minton Jr., 54, touched the Taser to Hair's upper left leg twice, but police officials did not say how long he applied the Taser. Minton has been with the Fort Pierce Police Department for 16 years and has no previous complaints for use of force, officials said.

Minton could not be reached for comment Friday. Police officials said he is on paid leave while the department completes both criminal and administrative investigations.

He used the drive-stun option on the Taser, which requires the officer to touch the weapon to the subject, releasing about 50,000 volts on contact. This setting does not deploy the two incapacitating prongs.

At a Wednesday news conference, police downplayed the effect of the drive-stun setting.

Sgt. Don Christman said officers are taught in Taser training to use the drive-stun setting only under certain circumstances — when there isn't enough time to reload a pronged cartridge, when only one of the two probes hits the subject and when officers are close to the subject, as in Minton's case.

Jim Ruggieri, a forensic electrical engineer from Fairfax, Va., works as a consultant for the police department in his area and has published articles and given talks about Taser dangers. Taser International is suing him for defamation.

Ruggieri said the drive-stun option is more powerful than the two-pronged mode and puts out 39 times more power than Taser International claims.

He hasn't seen any studies specifically looking at the effects on a pacemaker but bets a pacemaker only heightens the intensity of a Taser shock.

"The pacemaker acts like an antenna ready to receive any kind of electrical current," Ruggieri said. "I don't think they've ever tested it."

Taser spokesman Steve Tuttle said there's no need to test it, because modern pacemakers are designed to withstand a cardiac defibrillator. He said a Taser puts out 1/1000th the energy of a defibrillator.

"Mr. Ruggieri is peddling junk science," Tuttle said. "He keeps rearing his ugly head, and we keep having to dispel him."

The Department of the Army released a memo more than a year ago saying that "seizures and ventricular fibrillation can be induced by the electric current" of a Taser. "Individuals with heart disease and drug intoxication are considered more susceptible."

Tuttle countered: "There is no fact on that."

Tuttle said a Taser has never been named as the sole cause of death in any case and has been named as a possible contributing factor in six deaths since the Scottsdale, Ariz., company was founded in 1993.

He said groups such as Amnesty International report around 100 deaths linked to Tasers simply because a Taser was used before the person died.

Tuttle, like Fort Pierce police officials, said the drive-stun option is a backup option — not because it is more dangerous, but because it is less incapacitating.

Fort Pierce Police Chief Eugene Savage told reporters at a news conference Wednesday: "Don't form an opinion that this person is in this state because of the Taser."

Mary Hair has repeated during the past few days, in disbelief, that when her son left home Tuesday he was walking.

When she got to Lawnwood Tuesday night, she said she had to wait two hours before she could see her son while witnesses told her, "He's already dead."

Samuel Hair, a Fort Pierce native, was the nephew of Alfred Hair, who is considered by some to be the father of the Highwaymen painting movement of Fort Pierce. Alfred Hair was shot in a bar brawl in 1970.

Mary Hair is not sure whether she wants to take legal action after her son's death. Sitting outside the home Friday, she said, "I feel this is unjustified. The emergency room is for help."

She was just starting to get the Fort Pierce house ready for her and Samuel to move back into. She was planning to get carpets next, but now she has new arrangements to make.

"But God knows best," she said. "He's in a better place where police or nobody can harm him."