A trooper violated Texas Department of Public Safety procedures and the agency’s courtesy policy when he stopped Sandra Bland, who was jailed and days later was found dead in her cell in what police are calling an apparent suicide, reports Reuters.
The trooper has been put on desk duty during an investigation by the FBI and Texas Rangers into Bland’s death, the report says.
Bland, 28, was arrested July 10 for allegedly assaulting an officer during a traffic stop in Prairie View, a suburb northwest of Houston. On July 13 she was found hanged in her Waller County jail cell, but friends and relatives do not believe the official version given by the Waller County Sheriff’s Office, the report says.
“I just couldn’t imagine that someone would say that this woman, that was so strong, would take her own life. She wouldn’t have done that,” friend Lanitra Dean told Houston’s KHOU television station.
Bland, who lived in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, had just moved to Texas for a job with her alma mater, Texas Prairie View A&M University, and the arrest took place near the school, the report says. She was arraigned over the weekend of July 10 and her bond was set at $5,000.
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