Cellphone footage from the traffic stop involving Sandra Bland has now surfaced, as it shows what happened from her perspective when she was pulled over by a Texas state trooper.
The video was exclusively released by WFAA in partnership with the Investigative Network. The footage has now raised suspicions that Texas officials have withheld evidence in Sandra’s arrest, which later, unfortunately, led to her passing.
Prior to the recent footage, the state trooper’s dashcam footage was believed to be the only recording of the traffic stop. Sandra’s family is now calling for Texas officials to re-examine the case.
Shante Needham, Sandra’s sister said, “Open up the case. We also know they have an extremely, extremely good cover-up system.” Sandra’s family reportedly said they had never seen the footage until now.
Texas Department of Public Safety has reassured that the cellphone footage was not being withheld. They said in a statement, “The premise that the video was not produced as a part of the discovery process is wrong. A hard drive containing copies of 820 Gigabytes of data compiled by DPS from its investigation, including the dashcam videos, jail video footage and data from Sandra Bland’s cell phone, was part of discovery.”
Officials reportedly never released the footage, although dashcam footage showed that Sandra had her cellphone in her hand at the time of her encounter with the state trooper.
Cannon Lambert, the attorney who represented the Bland family, said, “I’ve not seen it,” when he was shown the footage by Brian Collister, a chief reporter with the Investigative Network. Lambert continued, “If they had turned it over, I would have seen it, Brian. I’ve not seen that.”
As we all know Sandra Bland was found deceased in her cell on July 13th, 2015, three days after she was arrested after the traffic stop. Her passing was ruled a suicide, which many people have argued was incorrect.
