PROTEST DECRIES DEATH AFTER TASER HITS

Friends, Family Lead Questions Over Use Of Stun Guns To Subdue Young
Man At Club

Family and friends of a Nashville man who died Saturday after being
repeatedly shocked by police Taser stun guns gathered at the base of
the state Capitol yesterday to protest his death and the continued
use of the controversial devices by Metro officers.

About 50 supporters held signs, passed out leaflets and reminisced
about Patrick Lee, 21, who was pronounced dead Saturday afternoon,
two days after a bizarre confrontation with Metro officers outside of
Mercy Lounge, a nightclub on Cannery Row near Eighth Avenue South.

Police said they tried to restrain Lee after he was removed from the
club and began running through the streets naked. At one point,
officers shocked him multiple times with Taser stun guns and beat his
lower body with batons.

Paramedics arrived to find Lee in cardiac and respiratory distress
and took him to Vanderbilt University Medical Center where he later
died. The exact cause of death is unknown, and investigations remain
under way by police and the medical examiner's office.

"This was unneeded," said friend Mia Barker, 19, a sophomore at
Middle Tennessee State University. "Obviously, now it needs to be
fought. It never needs to happen to anyone in his situation ever
again. I just wish he were here."

Lee, whom relatives said had planned to study audio engineering in
October, is the second person to die in Nashville after being shot
with a Taser since Metro police distributed 45 of the devices to
their patrol officers in November.

In May, Walter Lamont Seats died after swallowing crack cocaine
wrapped in plastic. In that case, police defended their use of the
Taser, saying it was the obstruction to his airway and not the stun
gun that caused his death.

The department said it is still trying to determine what caused Lee's death.

"The Police Department is taking these investigations very, very
seriously," Metro police spokesman Don Aaron said. "We have not made
judgments at this point regarding whether our policies and training
were fully complied with."

Police said Lee told them that he had ingested either LSD or PCP. But
his father, songwriter Earl Bud Lee, who co-wrote Garth Brooks' hit
Friends in Low Places, said hospital workers told him they had found
only Valium and marijuana in his son's blood.

Medical examiners have sent his blood for more detailed tests that
would detect a wider range of drugs than would the tests conducted at
the hospital.

Metro Councilman Jamie Isabel, who earlier this year had asked for a
moratorium on the use of Tasers by Metro police, asked for an
independent study of Taser safety yesterday after the latest death.

Isabel said he could call for Police Chief Ronal Serpas to appear
before Metro's Public Safety Committee to answer questions about the death.

"With an independent study, Nashville will then know whether these
devices are safe and are being used as they should be. I would prefer
to err on the side of caution. Lives are at stake," Isabel said in a
statement yesterday.

Alan Horsnell, a friend of Lee's since high school, marched with a
sign on his back that bore Lee's birthday, April 1, and the words
"Killed by the MNPD."

"This is not something that just liberals in the corner need to be
shocked by," he said. "The fact that police departments are using
(Tasers) as a legitimate law enforcement tool is really shocking."