Rally targets stun-gun deaths

<p>Sherry Heyberger, a 40-year-old Rohnert Park hairdresser, stood on a street corner at Old Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa, holding a sign that declared, "Tasers are Torture."</p><p>Every now and then, a car horn sounded from a passing vehicle during the Friday evening candlelight vigil, which protested the use of the electroshock weapon.</p><p>"This is the first time I've attended this kind of thing," said Heyberger, adding that she was a classmate of Nathan Vaughn, a Santa Rosa man who died after being hit three times by a stun gun fired by a Sonoma County sheriff's deputy during an arrest Dec. 20.</p><p>"It hit too close to home," Heyberger said.</p><p>Friday's vigil, which drew about 40 people, was organized by members of a number of groups, including Petaluma CopWatch, Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County and the October 22nd Coalition of Sonoma County, an anti-police-brutality group.</p><p>Organizers said the event was primarily a remembrance for Vaughn, as well as other Taser-related deaths. But the rally was also part of a growing campaign to have Tasers removed from local law enforcement's arsenal.</p><p>"Although it might seem like a lesser evil, they have been misusing it to such a degree that it has become lethal in this county," said Maggie Coshnear, a member of the local October 22nd Coalition.</p><p>Vaughn, a 39-year-old man with a heart condition and a history of drug use, is the second man in Sonoma County in as many months to die after being handcuffed and shocked with a Taser. The first, Guy James Fernandez, 42, died after being hit with a Taser on Nov. 9 by Rohnert Park authorities.</p><p>Preliminary autopsy results in Fernandez's case showed he had high levels of methamphetamine in his blood, although his cause of death has not been determined.</p><p>Officials said Vaughn had an extensive criminal record and had been in custody at the Sonoma County Jail the day before his death.</p><p>Four other people have died in Sonoma and Lake counties this year after law enforcement officers used lethal force.</p><p>At the vigil, Heyberger acknowledged Vaughn's troubled past but said her former classmate did not deserve to die.</p><p>"He shouldn't have died the way he did," Heyberger said. "He's been in and out of jail, yeah, but does that call for someone being Tasered three times."</p><p>Law enforcement agencies consider Tasers to be a nonlethal alternative to guns during confrontations.</p><p>Sonoma County Sheriff Bill Cogbill defended use of the Taser, which he said has been used effectively by law enforcement agencies across the country.</p><p>He said each case where a death occurs must be investigated indedendently to determine what other circumstances may have caused someone to become violent and die at the hands of officers. In many cases, he said, a suspect experiences out-of-control behavior, sometimes described as "excited delirium," brought on by the use of a drug such as methamphetamine.</p><p>If activists "want to get to the root of this," he said, they should be fighting the use of methamphetamine.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com</p>