ODESSA, TX — The Ector County Sheriff’s Office has confirmed an inmate at the Ector County Detention Center died in custody after being tased and restrained by jail staff.
According to MRT.com, 38-year-old Wallace Howell was arrested on June 15 after he allegedly evaded arrest.
Howell, who is African American, was allegedly involved in an altercation with an inmate after he was placed in a holding cell.
According to the report when jail staff intervened in the altercation Howell “began to charge staff members.”
Howell was then tased several times and then placed in a wrap, a police tool that restrains a person’s arms and legs. According to the report, the device was used to protect Howell and those around him.
Howell was then placed in a padded cell where he was later found unresponsive. Nearly an hour later after he was found by jail staff Howell was pronounced dead at Medical Center Hospital where he was treated.
It is unclear how long Howell was inside the holding cell or the padding cell. The report does not clarify Howell’s cause of death as the sheriff’s office awaits the results of the autopsy.
On June 15, the ECSO confirmed the Texas Rangers were also investigating Howell’s death as is protocol.
Howell is the second inmate to die at the Ector County Detention Center this year. The first was a 35-year-old Hispanic man who hanged himself with his jail uniform in the booking cell in January. He was found 30 minutes after he was arrested for allegedly violating parole and possessing a controlled substance.
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Comments
..aren't in charge of supervising volatile inmates, and so it's not a stretch to assume we'd have some questions to answer if someone died after we tazed and restrained them.
Some readers had this type of discussion with that irate little girl who went on a tangent about S.A. LIVE!, due to her misunderstanding of the term ''allegedly'' (“so declared, but without proof or legal conviction") and it's use in journalism.
"Murder" and "murderer" have judicial dimensions. They're legal terms to describe someone who's been convicted of murder. Some writers even shy away from the usage of the term ''suspected'', as in "suspected murderer" (to be viewed with suspicion), though this term is often seen as interchangeable as "alleged".
In short, news publications and outlets tend to err on the side of caution, much more so than your common social justice carnival sideshows.
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