A 72-year-old woman who refused to sign her speeding ticket got out of her truck and dared a deputy to shock her with a Taser.
So he did.
Video released by the Travis County Constable’s Office shows Kathryn Winkfein hitting the ground and moaning while the shocks jolted through her body after the May 11 confrontation with Travis County Sheriff’s Deputy Chris Bieze.
Winkfein was stopped for driving at 96kph in a 72kph zone just west of Austin. A dashboard camera in the deputy’s car shows the 1.5m Winkfein refusing to sign her speeding ticket, getting out of her white pickup truck and cursing at the deputy constable.
Bieze then pushes her to get her away from traffic.
“You’re gonna shove a 72-year-old woman,” Winkfein says angrily, standing close to the deputy.
“If you don’t step back, you’re going to get Tased,” Bieze says.
“Go ahead, Tase me,” Winkfein says. “I dare you.”
The video shows Bieze using the Taser and Winkfein hitting the ground and moaning in pain.
“Put your hands behind your back or you’re going to be Tased again,” Bieze yells, and then hits her with another jolt.
Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton, whose office does not oversee the constables, issued a statement on Wednesday saying: “I do not personally agree with the actions of the deputy constable as they are shown in the video. When I look at the video I am in awe of what happened.”
Winkfein was eventually charged with resisting arrest, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and fines up to US$4,000.
Constable Sergeant Major Gary Griffin has defended Bieze’s actions and said that Winkfein was belligerent and difficult to handle.
Winkfein told Austin TV station KTBC that she didn’t believe she deserved to be shocked: “I wasn’t argumentative, I was not combative. This is a lie.”
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
In the East Room of the White House on a particularly frigid Saturday afternoon, US President Joe Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 of the most famous names in politics, sports, entertainment, civil rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy and science. Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton aroused a standing ovation from the crowd as she received her medal. Clinton was accompanied to the event by her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and grandchildren. Democratic philanthropist George Soros and actor-director Denzel Washington were also awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor in a White House
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply