The son of Keenan Anderson, a man who died at the hospital after trying to evade police and being shot with a Taser, filed a claim for damages Friday.
Syncere Kai Anderson is 5 years old and was present at a news conference with his mother, Gabrielle Hansell when their lawyers announced the claim seeking $50 million in damages from the city of Los Angeles. Keenan’s cousin Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, was also present. It is procedure to file a claim against the city ahead of a lawsuit against the police department.
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Keenan Anderson, a Washington, D.C., high school teacher, was hospitalized after the Jan. 3 incident. He experienced a medical emergency hours later, but doctors were unable to save his life, the LAPD said in a press release. A coroner’s report on Anderson’s cause of death won’t be available for at least six weeks.
“If you Taser someone with 50,000 watts of electrical energy six times … is there really any wonder that moments later his heart will begin to flutter?” attorney Carl Douglas said at the news conference. “Is there any wonder why four hours later his heart could no longer withstand the pressure from that Taser and gave up, leaving a 5-year-old boy in his wake?”
In the body cam footage released by the police, Anderson is heard asking for help and accusing the officers of trying to kill him, and, at one point invoking the name of the man who brought the BLM movement to the mainstream, trying to “George Floyd” him. Floyd was a black man who died while being arrested by police in Minnesota, for which officer Derek Chauvin was convicted for murder.
“We can only wonder what Keenan Anderson meant,” attorney Ben Crump said. “But if he meant that he would end up dead at the end of the encounter at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department then Keenan Anderson was correct. They [did] George Floyd him.”
Like Floyd, Anderson was found to have drugs in his system per a toxicology report performed at the hospital. Los Angeles Police Protective League spokesman Tom Saggau said Anderson was on cocaine at the time of his arrest.
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During the news conference it was also revealed that some of the multiple officers that are currently on paid leave during a 14-day investigation are black. The identities of all the officers involved have yet to be revealed.
The attorneys also announced they’ve hired an independent pathologist who will report on Anderson’s cause of death in less than six weeks.
