Legal Commentary

LA Murder Suspect Dead After Being Tased During Stand-off

By Jeralyn

Stephen Clancy Hill, an actor in adult films, is dead. A suspect in a co-worker's murder, Hill stood on the top of a cliff for 8 hours, threatening to kill himself. He sat down for a few minutes to drink some water, stood back up, and again threatened to kill himself.

What did the Swat team do? It fired a taser at Hill, who collapsed, and either jumped or fell off the cliff, and died.

I'm sure they were tired of waiting for Hill to make a decision, but that's part of their job. [More...]

The LAPD version is he had been standing all day threatening to kill himself. They were afraid he'd get dehydrated. They tossed him some water. He sat down to drink it. Then he stood up and again threatened to fall on the sword or jump off the cliff and kill himself.

The cops say they tasered him to stop him from killing himself. Some news articles say after being tasered, he collapsed and fell off the cliff. Others say he jumped. In the video, it looked to me like he jumped.

An investigation will be conducted. The tasering was uncalled for, in my opinion. After 8 hours, he probably wasn't going anywhere, they should have continued to try and peacefully coax him off the cliff.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on June 06, 2010 (boomark / email).