TASER QUESTIONS

Months Later, Family Still Waiting For Answers In Death Of Relative

After more than eight months waiting for a coroner's office autopsy
report, a Salinas family can still only speculate about what really
caused Robert Heston's death and whether police should be held accountable.

Heston, 40, died Feb. 20, a day after Salinas police shot him
multiple times with a Taser stun gun. It is still unclear whether the
weapon, drugs, alcohol or a combination of the three is to blame for his death.

Heston's family has been thwarted every time they've asked for
information about the death. Specifically, they have not been allowed
to view two reports pathologists compiled earlier this year.

"They tell us every time we asked for the report that it'll be a
week, then a couple of months," said Misty Kastner, Heston's sister.
"You have the report, why a couple of more months? It doesn't take
this long to write a report; it's just them waiting to get the
results they want."

Cmdr. Greg Clark of the county coroner's office said his department
has finished the autopsy, but that the report won't be released until
the District Attorney's Office finishes its investigation, which
possibly could lead to charges being filed against the officers who
used the Taser on Heston.

Last week, Clark talked to Deputy District Attorney Berkeley Brannon,
who is in charge of the investigation, to find out where it stands.

"He said that they would need about another four weeks to finish up,"
said Clark.

"I hope we will be able to do it in less time," Brannon said Friday.

Salinas Police Chief Daniel Ortega said the city attorney has advised
him and others in the department not to comment on the Heston matter
because of potential charges that might be filed against his
officers. He confirmed that all officers involved in the case are back on duty.

"It's still under investigation, but there's nothing to indicate any
wrongdoing on the part of the officers, " Ortega said. "We're going
to wait until the district attorney makes their findings."

Several autopsies|

An autopsy was originally performed on Heston by pathologist Terri
Haddix of Stanford University, who does autopsies for several
California counties on a contract basis.

While her findings were never made public, representatives of the
Monterey County Sheriff's Office, which oversees the coroner's unit,
said that Haddix attributed Heston's death to Taser use, as well as
to high levels of methamphetamine in his system.

The findings were turned over for review to pathologist John Hain,
who performs the majority of Monterey County's autopsies. Sheriff's
officials were expected to disclose Hain's report at the beginning of
August, but citing a lack of experience in handling Taser-related
deaths, they decided to send Hain's and Haddix's report to Steven
Karch, a former San Francisco medical examiner considered to be an
expert on drug-induced and Taser-related deaths.

Nationwide, the link between drugs and Taser-related deaths is well documented.

From 1999 to 2004, 71 people in the United States and Canada died in
incidents involving the police and Tasers, according to a report
released last month by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The report also mentions a survey conducted of 79 Northern and
Central California law enforcement agencies, of which 56 added Taser
stun guns to their arsenal. Of those, only four departments regulated
the number of times an officer was allowed to stun a person and only
four agencies created their own training material for officers. The
only other training manuals are provided by the Taser company.

Attorney John Burton represents Heston's family, as well as the
family of Michael Robert Rosa, who died after Seaside police stunned
him multiple times with Tasers in August 2004.

"Both Michael Rosa and Robert Heston died after multiple tasings,"
said Burton. "I think that's the case with many of the tasing deaths.
He (Heston) was killed in front of the full view of his family and
they're (police) saying he was shocked six to eight times... One
tasing might be harmless for most people. That doesn't mean multiple
tasings are harmless, especially to those who may be vulnerable at
the time (under the influence of drugs)."

Searching for information|

It's the multiple stunning of Heston that bothers the Kastners most,
and without an explanation of how he died, Kurt Kastner has turned to
the Internet to search for information.

"Let's say you've got five guys and each guy fires a five-second
burst. At best, you're going to have two guys with an overlap,"
hypothesized Kastner, a Salinas native and electrician. "So, at some
point, at the least, a minimum of 100,000 volts will be fired at a
person. Now if you have five guys firing, that's 250,000 volts at
worst, at one particular moment. He's going to get lit up with
250,000 volts. You can't tell me with any reasonable belief in your
heart that 250,000 volts isn't going to screw your heart up,
especially if you've got five guys cycling three or four times each."

Kurt and Misty Kastner acknowledge that Heston struggled with drugs
and alcohol, but they're leery that, as in many other deaths related
to Tasers, the final autopsy will point to drugs rather than to the
stunning itself.

"I'm sure it (drugs) had something to do with it. We already know my
brother had a history of drug problems, that's no big secret. But
that's not what killed my brother. The bottom line is that he was
tased multiple times." said Misty Kastner. "It (drugs) could have
killed him maybe next year, if he kept doing it, but it wasn't drugs
that killed him that night, it was the Taser that killed him."

She said they are trying to research how many times police use Tasers.

"You can't be excessively tasing people. I'm not bashing the cops,
but they knew my brother. Some times I think to myself, yeah, (the
police were thinking) he's the bad guy on drugs. Well, the only
person my brother ever hurt was himself."