A Plantation, Fla., police officer will be sent for additional training after accidentally deploying her Taser on a 10-year-old boy right after telling the child and his brother that the weapon wasn’t a toy.
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According to the Sun-Sentinel, the boy suffered only minor injuries, but investigators noted that if the probes had penetrated deeper into the boy’s skin, he likely would have collapsed and been “incapacitated until the Taser stopped emitting the electrical charge.”
The report notes that Officer Iris Stan was staying with a friend and her two sons after being displaced by Hurricane Irma. On Sept. 14, while still wearing uniform, she decided to discuss gun safety with the children because her bedroom door didn’t lock, investigators said.
As the group stood together in a circle for the talk, she told the kids that the gun was dangerous and should not be touched. When she went to remove her Taser from her duty belt, however, she accidentally pulled the triggers. Stan later told investigators that she had no idea how the weapon got turned on, authorities said.
The Taser fired two probes, striking one of the boys in his right leg above and below his knee.
“My brother dropped, he ran around the bed, dropped on top of the bed and started jumping up and down,” the boy’s 13-year-old brother told authorities.
“It was a total accident,” the boys’ mother added.
Police say fatigue was the cause of the misfire, saying that Stan had worked eight shifts in the past 10 days and changed shifts as part of her training, on top of being displaced from her home.
Still, investigators acknowledged that Stan was careless for having the Taser pointed at a child while her finger was on the trigger.
Read more at the Sun Sentinel.
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