SC man struggles to breath, dies after Irmo police use Taser on him
Irmo police say they used a Taser last month on a man who immediately collapsed and then died days later in a local hospital.
Byron Jackson, 45, of North Augusta, died Wednesday, June 25, after being stunned by the Taser and arrested by the Irmo Police Department in the early morning hours on Sunday, June 22.
Following Jackson’s death, the department issued several inconsistent statements regarding the incident in a series of news releases and comments to The State.
On Thursday, the department released a timeline of officers’ interaction with Jackson, the father of six. The timeline was released one day after a news conference where Bryon Jackson’s family stood alongside Columbia civil rights attorney Bakari Sellers and called on the Irmo Police Department to release the body cam and dash cam footage showing Jackson’s arrest.
On June 22, shortly after 2 a.m., Irmo police were dispatched to a possible altercation inside a vehicle, according to police.
When officers attempted to approach Jackson’s utility work van, he fled and was pursued until he crashed into a pile of pallets behind a vacant building located at 7812 Broad River Road, police said.
Officers say Jackson then exited the van and began fleeing on foot, despite commands to stop.
Officers eventually apprehended Jackson, engaged in a physical altercation with officers, causing them to deploy a drive-stun Taser, police said.
At that point, officers noticed Jackson began having trouble breathing, which prompted an EMS dispatch, according to police.
While one officer remained with Jackson, another searched his vehicle for identification, but found none, police said.
The police department was notified by a hospital on Wednesday, June 25, that Jackson had died, the department release said, but neither the police nor the Richland County Coroner’s Office identified Jackson’s cause of death.
Jackson was admitted to the hospital as a John Doe, even though the vehicle he’d been driving was registered to his sister, according to Sellers. As a result, his family wasn’t notified of his hospitalization until around 7 p.m. on Sunday.
In a news release issued on June 27, Irmo police said Jackson died while in police custody. But on Thursday, the department retracted that statement.
“Mr. Jackson died not in police custody,” said Irmo Police Department spokesperson Ashley Hunter. “He was never charged (and) there were no Miranda rights read. He “was never physically in police custody.”
Rather, Jackson ”was apprehended safely after the altercation (with police).”
But a police incident report shows that officers initially handcuffed Jackson behind his back before moving them to the front when he began having difficulty breathing. As Jackson’s condition began to worsen, emergency medical personnel requested that officers remove the handcuffs as they performed CPR.
Jackson was charged with at two least crimes, including resisting arrest and traffic offenses other than DUI, according to the incident report.
Sellers said whether someone is in police custody doesn’t hinge on whether they were Mirandized or arrested.
“You don’t have to be Mirandized to be in custody,” Sellers Told The State Thursday. “If you’ve been tased, subdued or stopped, you can be deemed to be in custody.
“The Irmo Police Department is bungling this day by day and it’s really disappointing that it’s become the calamity of errors that we thought it was,” Sellers said. The Jackson family “has not publicly indicted (the department), but what we would say is release the video.”
The apparent discrepancies between whether Jackson was in police custody at the time of his death follows concerns by the Jackson family and Sellers, who said Tuesday that police were misrepresenting what happened on the morning Jackson encountered officers.
“We do know for a fact that there have been some misrepresentations by the Irmo Police Department, the most glaring of which is that there was not a high-speed chase,” Sellers said Tuesday.
The officers involved in the altercation, who have not been identified, were placed on administrative leave in accordance with department policy, Irmo Police Chief Bobby Dale said in a news release.
The Jackson family and Sellers called on the department to release the name of the officers.
“The funny part about these cases is usually officers get the benefit of the doubt that individuals (like Jackson) do not, but right now we’re giving (the department) time to answer questions,” Sellers said Tuesday.
