Subscribe
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE

Linwood Lambert, a Black South Boston, Va. man, encountered three police officers on May 4, 2013 in the early morning hours. In a chilling new report, it has been revealed that Lambert was handcuffed and tasered 20 times in a half-hour span before he died in police custody.

Lambert, 46, was initially approached  by the officers around 5 a.m. that May morning en route to an emergency room according to reported details. Lambert, who lived in a local Super 8 motel, apparently was causing a disturbance and the police were responding to a call. Lambert was being taken to the hospital for speaking strangely but was not under arrest from the onset.

As the trip ensued, Lambert allegedly became agitated and the officers arrested him but that’s where the facts become largely foggy.

MSNBC reports:

As the officers pulled up to the hospital, Lambert kicked out the squad car window.

Video from inside the car shows officers yelling at him to stop. When they cracked the passenger door, Lambert jumped out, sprinting roughly 20 feet towards the ER entrance and crashing into the building’s glass doors.

The officers ran after him and began tasing him. In response, Lambert’s body goes stiff and, with his hands cuffed, his arms could not break the fall when he hit the cement. The three officers surrounded him on the ground.

One ordered him to “stay down;” another, Officer Bratton, told him, “Every time you get up, I’m going to pop you.”

Lambert told them, “I didn’t do nothing,” and can be heard moaning in the recording. The officers tell Lambert to lie down, stay down, get on his belly, and roll over – while warning they will taser him again.

“I’m going to light you up again – roll over, roll over, turn over!” Bratton says.

Lambert remained on the ground, saying OK, but the officers tased him again. They restrained his legs with shackles.

Lambert then tells the officers he used some cocaine that morning, which prompted them to arrest him for disorderly conduct and destruction of property. All of this is taking place in plain view of the hospital doors and instead of placing him in the facility, the officers take Lambert away and tase him some more although he begged them not to.

The officers are seen on video laughing at an unconscious Lambert, noting that he was “bleeding like a hog” as they travel to the local jail. After noticing he wasn’t breathing, they rush back to Sentara Halifax Regional Hospital, which they originally took him, and he was pronounced dead at 6:23 a.m.

Lambert’s sister, Gwendolyn Smalls, filed a $25 million civil suit against the South Boston Police Department for excessive force, wrongful death, and other claims. The police refuse to admit to any wrongdoing. The lawsuit led to a court order that unleashed the videos of Lambert’s arrest that fateful morning, which the family just viewed weeks ago.

Watch MSBNC’s report on Linwood Lambert and his mysterious death in the clip below.

Photo: MSNBC