Newly released video of 46-year-old Linwood Lambert details an hour-long ordeal where Lambert is reportedly tased nearly 20 times by Virginia police resulting in his death.
NBC News reported, police took Lambert into custody after responding to complaints about noise from the hotel that he was staying. According to police reports Lambert was acting paranoid and hallucinating. Lambert was not accused of committing a crime and at the time not arrested. Officers decided to escort him to the hospital for medical care.
When the officers arrived at the hospital with Lambert, he tried to leave the police car by kicking out the windows of the squad car. Once outside the vehicle, video captured at the scene shows Lambert running towards the hospital doors and officers tasing him.
Officers then put him back in the police car the squad car’s video camera captured officers continuing to discharge their tasers into Lambert. After the altercation outside of the police card officers decided to transport Lamber to jail. When they realized Lambert was unconscious, NBC News reported cops attempted to revive him and called for emergency assistance.
The ambulance that picked Lambert up after officers reported him to be incapacitated came from the same hospital where they initially drove him to nearly an hour earlier. Lambert was pronounced dead on arrival by Sentara Halifax Regional Hospital.
On Thursday, NewsOne Now guest host Ray Baker spoke with Lambert’s sister, Gwendolyn Smalls about the police encounter that cost Lambert his life.
Smalls told Baker her family is “desperate for justice.” She explained there is a considerable amount of confusion as it relates to the case. Her family was informed that the investigation into her brother’s death was closed and there are reports of a special prosecutor being brought in to look at the case.
Smalls said, “hopefully the second prosecutor “will see something that the first prosecutor did not see, that the world can see that they tasered my brother to death. He did not die of what they are accusing of dying from.”
According to Lambert’s autopsy, he died from the effects of “acute cocaine intoxication.”
In order to have this disturbing video released, Smalls explained she had to “continue to beat the ground” to obtain information about her brother’s death. She said the City of South Boston and the town this incident took place in has not been forthcoming with information regarding Lambert’s killing.
“We received videos, but we did not receive this video until three weeks ago and we saw the video as a family because we didn’t know how we would handle it — because they would not give me any evidence,” said Smalls.
She continued, the lead investigator told her file a lawsuit using the Freedom of Information Act to obtain information about her brother’s murder in stead of telling her what they found.
Smalls told Baker, “Thank God we got some of the best lawyers in the nation, who was able to get the video and if it wasn’t for them I was told that we would not have gotten this video and it would have been swept under the rug.”
Watch Baker, Smalls and the NewsOne Now panel discuss the horrific death in custody case of Linwood Lambert in the video clip above.
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