Sandra Bland
By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 8 years ago

How did Sandra Bland die?

A couple days after she was violently arrested after a routine traffic stop, Sandra Bland was found dead in her jail cell. 

On July 9, 28-year-old Sandra Bland of Naperville, Ill., drove to Texas to start a new job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M. On July 10, police stopped Bland just outside the campus for allegedly failing to signal while changing lanes. Police claim that during the stop she became combative, was thrown to the ground, arrested and charged with “assault on a public servant.”

On July 13, around 9 a.m., before her family could bail her out, Bland was found dead inside a Waller County, Texas, jail cell. Police claim she died from “self-inflicted asphyxiation.” Her family and friends say that is impossible; that the woman they know, who fought strongly against police brutality and had just gotten a new job, would never have committed suicide.

“I do suspect foul play,” a friend, Cheryl Nanton, told ABC 7. “I believe that we are all 100 percent in belief that she did not do harm to herself.”

The Texas police, on the other hand, is 100 percent hoping we believe this young woman with no apparent mental health problems, who had just started a new job, who was outspoken in the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and whose brutal arrest had just been caught on video, committed suicide. Sorta like how they wanted us to believe Walter Scott had gained control of the cop’s taser before he was shot? Or that Freddie Gray was “intentionally trying to injure himself” in the back of that van?

A believer in the power of social media to make change, Bland can be heard thanking the bystander recording her arrest as she’s taken into police custody — custody from which she was never released alive. May Bland’s friends and family get the truth and justice for her.

Header image: The Root

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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