Community leaders are calling for action after a New London carjacking suspect who was shot twice with a Taser died in police custody over the weekend.
"He never hijacked nobody," said Lashano Gilbert's mother, Donna Smith, during an NAACP protest outside New London police headquarters Tuesday. "I don't know who that is they're talking about. That's not my son."
Gilbert, a Bahamian medical school graduate who studied in Cuba and Jamaica and was working in Canada "to become a better doctor," his mother said, died Saturday following his arrest.
Police said Gilbert jumped through an open car window while a woman was driving Friday night and made stabbing motions at the driver. He appeared to be in an "altered state of mind" and was "speaking in a bizarre manner."
Officers shot him with a Taser twice during the incident – once to take him into custody when he struggled violently with police and the second time at police headquarters after he took off his pants and began twisting them as if to make a noose.
NAACP leaders are pushing for a moratorium on the police use of stun guns and Tasers, saying 15 people have died from stun gun use in Connecticut, 12 of them black or Hispanic.
"We've seen the situations in Meriden, we've seen the situations in New Britain, Hartford, East Hartford and all throughout the state of Connecticut," said Scot X. Esdaile, president of the Connecticut State Conference of NAACP Branches. "We're sorry to hear that a person has come to visit their family and ended up dead."
Local
State police investigators are reviewing the case and the medical examiner is working to determine Gilbert's cause of death. Toxicology tests typically take several weeks.
