US: Police who tasered 87-year-old woman with dementia say their actions were ‘justified’

Chatsworth Police said Marth Al-Bishara refused to drop the steak knife she was using to cut the flowers despite several commands to do so and that she walked towards them with the knife at one point.

Police had attended the wooded area about 80 miles north of Atlanta last Friday after an employee phoned 911 to report the woman who was spotted wandering around with a knife near a Boys and Girls Club, a national organisation providing activities for children after school.

“There’s a lady walking on the bike trails, she has a knife and she won’t leave,” the caller said on the phone.

“She told me she doesn’t speak English, and she’s walking up the trail with a knife towards me.”

“It looks like she’s walking around looking for something, vegetation to cut down or something. She has a bag too,” the caller added.

The Boys and Girls Club employee told the dispatcher that the woman did not appear to be a threat.

“But she came at you with a knife, though, right?” the dispatcher said. “No, she just brought the knife onto the property in her hand, she didn’t try and attack anybody or anything,” the caller replied.

Two officers and Chatsworth police chief Josh Etheridge attended at the scene, where they asked the woman to drop the knife, tasering her when she refused.

Her daughter-in-law, who later appeared, explained that the elderly woman had dementia and only spoke Arabic.

Mr Etheridge said that police used the least possible force and that their actions were justified.