She begged police for medical help. The next day, she died of a stroke.

Woman dies after begging Knoxville police for medical help, video shows - The Washington Post
Over the course of at least seven minutes, Lisa Edwards repeatedly asked the Knoxville, Tenn., police officers surrounding her for her inhaler. As Edwards continued her pleas for help that morning, one officer called them “an act.” He told her all he wanted to do was get some “coffee and oatmeal,” saying it was “the Lord’s day.” Another jokingly offered her a cigarette while she waited to be given her inhaler. As Edwards was driven to jail in the back of a police car, she became unresponsive, authorities have said. She was driven back to Fort Sanders, where she died of a stroke the next day. Last week, the Knoxville Police Department released video footage from the arrest. The Knox County district attorney general’s office announced Monday that it would not be filing criminal charges against the officers involved, citing a Feb. 7 autopsy that concluded Edwards died of “natural causes” and a review of multiple police videos that showed “at no time did law enforcement interaction cause or contribute to Ms. Edwards’ death.” “Specifically, Ms. Edwards was not beaten by the police, she was never subdued, there was no physical struggle between law enforcement and Ms. Edwards, and there was no restraint asphyxia,” the district attorney general’s statement read. But Edwards’s son, Tim Boylan, called the events of that day “unacceptable.” “For her to be treated like that, I can’t even wrap my head around it,” Boylan, 43, told The Washington Post. The Knoxville Police Department is conducting an internal investigation, and the four officers involved have been placed on paid administrative leave, the department said in a news release. It will “determine if the officers followed all of KPD’s policies and procedures,” Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon said in a statement. Edwards was a longtime resident of Tennessee but in 2018 moved to Rhode Island, where Boylan, his wife and children live, to be closer to them. She adored her grandchildren, said her daughter-in-law, August Boylan. In Rhode Island, Edwards began using a wheelchair, and in 2019, she suffered a stroke that paralyzed her left side, her daughter-in-law said. In early February, Edwards decided to move back to Tennessee to live with friends. But during the Feb. 4 flight to Knoxville, she began complaining of abdominal pain, according to the district attorney general’s office. After landing, she was taken to Blount Memorial Hospital, treated for digestive issues and discharged. Edwards went to Fort Sanders later that day, where she was observed overnight and discharged the next morning, the office said. Just after her discharge, Edwards called her son and sounded upset, August Boylan said. Still in Rhode Island, the Boylans weren’t sure how to help. Edwards told her son she would figure something out. It was the last time they would speak. According to the district attorney general’s office, Edwards refused to leave Fort Sanders after she was discharged around 6:55 a.m. The hospital’s security officers gave her a trespass warning before calling Knoxville police, the office said. The body-camera footage released Monday begins about an hour later, when officers approached Edwards in the Fort Sanders parking garage and asked her to leave. Edwards was in a wheelchair, wrapped in a blanket with her suitcase beside her, the footage shows. About 30 minutes passed before the officers arrested Edwards on criminal trespassing charges and began moving her to a police van, video shows. “Please, don’t let me fall,” Edwards says as two officers hold her arms and hoist her out of the wheelchair. When the officers then ask her to step up into the van, Edwards is heard saying: “I can’t. I can’t.” Edwards asks for her inhaler as she struggles to breathe. Officers try to place her in the van multiple times, as she tells them repeatedly that she cannot take the step up. “I can’t pick her up ’cause she’s dead weight,” one officer says in the body-camera footage, adding that Edwards was not using her legs “on purpose.” Around 8:45 a.m., another officer comes to assist and begins speaking to Edwards, who is lying across the steps of the police van, saying that he is not going to “deal with your mess this morning” and that all he wants to do is get coffee and oatmeal. “We’ve already spent too much time on you,” the officer says in the footage. “You’re going to get up here in this van, and you’re going to go to jail. We’re done with this.” ‘He didn’t deserve the way he died’: Mother of teen restrained at behavioral health facility speaks out Edwards continues to ask for her inhaler and tells officers it is in her purse. An officer searches through it, laying out its contents, the body-camera footage shows. “You want a cigarette?” the officer asks, holding up a red-and-white box from the purse in front of Edwards as she lies on the concrete beside the van. Another officer hands Edwards her inhaler around 8:52 a.m. “She’s not even using the inhaler,” an officer says. “It’s just blowing out.” About 9 a.m., officers carry Edwards toward a police cruiser, turning her onto her back and sliding her across the back seat. Police on Monday also released video from a camera that was inside the cruiser. That footage shows Edwards attempting to sit up while again saying that she could not breathe. On the way to the jail, the cruiser stops a car driving recklessly, according to the body-camera footage. The officer who was driving then opens the back door of the cruiser and finds Edwards unconscious, the footage shows. She was then taken back to Fort Sanders in an ambulance. Tim Boylan tried to call Edwards back several times that morning, but there was no answer. It was early afternoon when someone finally picked up — a sergeant with the Knoxville police, who told him to call the hospital, he said. Edwards died on Feb. 6 of a stroke “due to atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease,” according to the district attorney general’s office. She had gone “into cardiac arrest in the back of a police cruiser due to a combination of her natural diseases,” the office added. “I didn’t believe it,” Tim Boylan said. The day before Edwards died, Tim Boylan said he missed one of his mom’s calls around 7:55 a.m., minutes before the beginning of the body-camera footage that was made public. As they piece together information about Edwards’s final hours, the Boylans keep returning to the voice mail she left that day. Her voice is muffled in the message, August Boylan said, but one phrase in it sounds clear: “Please help me.”