Blake Dwyer remembers pain:
The agonizing burn of electrical shock.
And shouting.
And fear.
“I thought a swarm of wasps was after me,” the 17-year-old Guyer High School athlete said. “I was trying to fight them off.”
He doesn’t remember the epileptic seizure he suffered July 18, 2007, when he was 16.
He doesn’t remember fighting to keep from being tied to a stretcher or hitting a paramedic.
His brother, Travis Baker, 17, remembers all of it. He recalls screaming at Corinth police to stop shocking Blake with a Taser. His mother, Deana, remembers hearing Travis crying on the telephone.
“He was saying, ‘Blake is having a seizure, and they’re hurting him,’” she said.
And in case they should forget Blake’s experience, they have photographs of 12 separate sets of burns from the double posts of a Taser.
Corinth police did not respond to a message asking for comment about the incident. Corinth city attorney Michael Bucek won’t release records because the city expects litigation, he said. He did say there was no internal affairs investigation into the incident.
“The only thing I can say is that we believe this is a frivolous lawsuit with no merit,” Bucek said.
No lawsuit has been filed yet. Deana Dwyer sought the advice of Denton lawyer Rocky Haire, who said he has been trying to work with Corinth police for an out-of-court resolution with no luck so far.
“Deana just wants them to acknowledge they did it wrong,” Haire said. “She tried to tell them their officers needed some training on what to do with epileptic seizures and postictal psychosis, but they just blew her off.”
Haire contacted an investigator with the Texas Municipal Intergovernmental Risk Pool, which insures city governments against lawsuits. Haire said the investigator told him that a check of the Taser shows it was fired 15 times within five or six minutes that day.
Police taser 16 yr old boy over 12 times for having a seizure | War On You