PITTSBURGH -- Allegheny County homicide detectives said early indications are that Swissvale police were justified in using a Taser to subdue a man who later died, but the FBI has also decided to investigate.
The official cause of death for Andre Thomas, 37, of Monroeville, is still undetermined, pending results of toxicology tests. The county medical examiner's office said those results won't be available for eight to 21 weeks.
A spokesman for the FBI's Pittsburgh office said that the agency is opening a preliminary investigation into Thomas' death. The FBI declined to comment further or say which specific aspects of the case will be under investigation.
At about midnight Monday, Swissvale police officers answered a call about Thomas, who was said to be yelling, pounding on doors and acting irrationally on Hawthorne Avenue. An officer used a Taser on Thomas and handcuffed him on the ground, and he died a short time later at a hospital.
Thomas’ father, Dennis, has retained an attorney to learn more about his son’s death. He said it is not so much the use of the Taser that is in question, but what happened afterward.
“A 37-year-old healthy man handcuffed on the ground after being Tasered does not end up dead without some underlying cause,” said Dennis Thomas.
Two witnesses told WTAE Channel 4 Action News that they think excessive force was used after Andre Thomas had been hit with the Taser -- and Team 4 has learned that the officer who used that weapon on him has been the subject of citizen complaints in the past.
"You had two officers that really brutally stomped him out," neighbor Rose Adams said. "One had his hand balled up tight. He roared back and he punched him with all his might. He turned around, he grabbed his wrist and started shaking his hand. The guy's body jumped off the ground. The next thing I seen, the guy was regurgitating. A few seconds later, the last breath I believe he took was his leg shaking, and then there was no more movement."
“To walk up against four police officers, what idiot would do that?” said Dennis Thomas. “I’m not saying that something didn’t make it happen, but I just don’t believe it. I believe -- well, I'm going to keep what I believe to myself for now.”
Thomas and his wife are taking care of their son’s 3-year-old daughter, Sahara. They have hired an investigator who claims he has found a half-dozen civilian witnesses telling nearly the same story of alleged police mistreatment.
“There are not more witnesses for the police, other than police,” said Thomas.
County police, who are investigating the case, said the responding officers from Swissvale appear to have acted within reason by using the Taser.
"He was yelling and screaming and acting really erratically, and they didn't know what the situation was, so they asked him just to calm down and so forth. He made a movement toward them, so they had to Tase him," assistant county police superintendent Jim Morton said.
Thomas had a 2006 DUI conviction and pleaded guilty to fleeing police and resisting arrest as part of that case. He also had three convictions in the 1990s for drugs and burglary.
Police sources told Team 4's Jim Parsons that Swissvale police Officer Debra Indovina used the Taser on Thomas.
Indovina was the subject of an internal investigation when she was an Edgewood police officer and pepper-sprayed war protesters in Regent Square in March 2003. She resigned from Edgewood and became a full-time Swissvale officer in 2004.
Pennsylvania law does not require police officers to be trained in the use of Tasers, but it does require that they have a policy on the use of force. Swissvale police declined Team 4's request for a copy of the department's policy.
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