A Los Angeles porn actor who mysteriously died in April after he was Tasered by police suffered “neck trauma,” according to new findings released by the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office. In making its determination, the coroner’s office also said it could not rule how 39-year-old Marland Anderson—who went by the porn name Sledge Hammer—was injured, leaving the manner of death as “undetermined.”
The Coroner’s findings list “neck compression” as well as “acute anoxic encephalopathy and aspiration pneumonia” as the final cause of death. LAPD Commander Andrew Smith said the department’s Force Investigation Division is reviewing the incident. “We are conducting an investigation into this incident,” he said. “That investigation is not yet complete. We cannot discuss an investigation that has yet to be completed.”
Because the full autopsy report is not yet available, and the L.A. Coroner’s Office declined to explain its findings further, The Daily Beast contacted two experts in forensics pathology to review the cause and manner of death.
“His neck was injured almost certainly in the altercation with the multiple police officers—very likely leaning, pressing down on him, possibly his neck was hyper-extended,” says renowned pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht. “They compressed his neck either by direct pressure on his neck, or the neck may have been hyper-extended and so on. But since they use the word ‘compression,’ I would think they compressed by pressing down on his neck—whether they kneeled on him or sat on him, I can’t tell you that. But that’s what happened.”
Dr. Stephen Godfrey, the medical director of Path Counsel & Peace of Mind, a St. Louis-based private autopsy service, added that “the anoxic encephalopathy tells me there was a period of time where his brain sustained irreversible damage from not getting enough blood supply.” Aspiration pneumonia occurs when foreign matter, usually food particles or vomit, enters into the bronchi.
Although the findings are the first indication of what may have happened to the 6-foot-1, 210-pound Anderson, many questions remain about what exactly transpired between the porn actor and the police. Anderson’s girlfriend said he took sleeping pills and drank alcohol to try to sleep, but the preliminary findings do not mention if intoxication was a factor in his death.
“There are different scenarios that can lead to this neck injury,” Wecht said. “When you think of compression, choke-holding would be a form of compression. We don’t know enough about the situation to be able to determine that’s what happened. This may well be the most likely physical mechanism. There was some force upon the neck. I’m not saying it has to be a choke-hold 100 percent, but that is another possibility here.”
“There was some force upon the neck,” says one independent expert. “I’m not saying it has to be a choke-hold 100 percent, but that is another possibility here.”
The incident began in the early morning hours of April 8, when authorities responded to a call by Anderson’s girlfriend, Alexa Cruz, of an attempted suicide in Canoga Park, a suburb in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley. Cruz, who was interviewed by The Daily Beast at the time of Anderson’s death, said her boyfriend, who was wielding a knife, was threatening to end his life. She was so scared that she called the police, hoping he would get the psychiatric help she felt he needed but refused to get on his own.
Although his friends described him as a giant “teddy bear” who preferred to be alone in his apartment with his girlfriend reading comic books, playing with his superhero figurines, and watching science-fiction movies, Anderson had suffered since childhood from insomnia and, at times, paranoia. To help induce sleep, he often combined sleeping pills with alcohol, and had also tried medical marijuana but stopped when it caused profound hallucinations. In early April, the week before Cruz called police for help, Anderson was behaving particularly strangely, she said. His paranoia was intensifying and he mentioned wanting to die.
According to LAPD spokesman Lt. Andrew Neiman, officers arrived at his Canoga Park apartment at 3:24 a.m. and determined that Anderson needed to be medically evaluated. Seventeen minutes later, the Los Angeles Fire Department ambulance arrived, and Anderson walked down the stairs and left peacefully with them.
As the ambulance headed to Northridge Hospital Medical Center, Anderson lay on a gurney, with his hands cuffed to the left and right sides of the gurney, Neiman said. In the ambulance with him were a police officer, the driver, and a paramedic.
Source. The Daily Beast
