A recent case of suicide in a Texas jail instantly caught the attention of the press. An imprisoned 28-year-old African-American woman, called Sandra Bland hanged herself a year after she posted a video in which she was opening up about feeling a little depressed.
However, this did not raise any suspicions, given that her relatives never regarded her as a danger to herself. While the woman’s family and friends are giving information about her, the FBI are leading an investigation of the circumstances that might have led to her death.
On the 16th of July, a prosecutor announced that the evidence related to the woman’s death will be presented in front of a grand jury.
Sandra Bland was found dead earlier this week, on Monday, in her Waller County jail cell in Hampstead. After conducting a medical exam, the experts ruled that her death was most probably suicide by hanging.
According to the authorities, she had been arrested on Friday for assault following a traffic stop and brought to Waller County.
This case became popular because it occurred in the midst of huge national scrutiny of police officials, following a series of cases in which police officers killed people of color or let them die while on their watch.
This has given rise to a lot of skepticism that is now being expressed on social media websites , regarding the truthfulness of the official account of Bland’s death.
However, it seems that the young woman had spoken about her feelings in a video she posted a earlier this year. In this video, she was saying how hard it was to deal with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), although she never mentioned the cause of her PTSD.
“I want you guys to know it’s a daily struggle. It’s a daily test. Depression is nothing but the devil. It’s a way of mind and it’s a way of thinking,” she said.
Even so, her relatives are very puzzled about her death, because, in spite of the mild depression she talked about, Sandra was not the type of person that would commit suicide, according to her sister, Sharon Cooper.
Moreover, another relative said that Sandra Bland had called her while imprisoned and told her that she did not know why she was in jail and that the officer who arrested her might have broken her arm.
Even if the investigation is still ongoing, there are many questions to be answered about the woman’s death and it would be hardly surprising if this turned into a national debate.
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