Yet Another Senseless Death By Cop
BY Herschel Smith
7 hours ago
Grim’s Hall (via a reader).
Here in North Carolina, though up in Ashe County, deputies accidentally killed a motorcycle rider by triggering his airbag safety vest. They were unreasonably aggressive, pulling a gun on him and physically dragging him off the bike without bothering to disconnect the safety vest. If you don’t know how these work, they are connected to the bike so that if you come off of it the ripcord causes the airbags to expand. These things exert pretty serious force (as you can see from that link), which can cause problems for breathing — especially if you are also being choked out by a deputy sheriff. An autopsy ruled Mast’s death a homicide and found the cause of death was “compression asphyxia of the torso and neck.”
First of all let’s get past the issue that most cops are overly aggressive and paranoid idiots and probably started the whole downward spiral of this terrible event.
This is also why I don’t like cops touching another man’s gun. The gun might be striker fired. It might be hammer fired. It might have a safety. It might not. It might be in half-cocked position. It might not be. It might have a round in the chamber. It might not. It might have a modified (light) trigger. It might not. It might have other modifications of which the cop is unaware.
Only a stupid department run by imbeciles would have a procedure where a cop touches and pulls another man’s gun off of him for reasons of “officer safety.” I cannot imagine something more unsafe.
On May 13, 2025 at 11:47 pm, Archer said:
IANAL, but….
They had no probable cause for anything other than a traffic stop, and even that is dubious. Certainly insufficient to pull a gun or violently pull him off his motorcycle to “detain” him.
They didn’t suspect, and couldn’t have known, that he had meth in his system. They had no reason to suspect he was armed or dangerous (which may or may not have been an offense, I don’t know NC law). They had no reason to suspect he was transporting drugs (on a motorcycle, with no backpack?). So what did they suspect him of, other than riding a motorcycle at night?
All they had was his identity and their own aggression. And now he’s dead because of it.
I wasn’t on that grand jury, which is good for the cops because I would have voted to charge.
I wonder: What are the odds the prosecutor half-assed his case so the GJ wouldn’t indict?