The probe into the death of Sandra Bland is being handled as a murder investigation, the Texas district attorney overseeing the inquiry said on Monday. “There are many questions being raised about this case. It needs a thorough and exhaustive review,” Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis said in a press conference Monday evening. “This is being treated like a murder investigation.”
Mathis said it was still “too early to make any kind of determination that this is a suicide or a murder,” but the case would go to a grand jury. The family of Sandra Bland has continually questioned the police’s version of events, which starts with a seemingly innocuous traffic stop on Friday, July 10th and ends with Bland in jail taking her own life last Monday morning.
Bland was pulled over for what police say was an improper lane change. The stop escalated, officials now say, when the trooper reportedly mishandled the interaction and grew confrontational after Bland refused to put out her cigarette. The exact cause and nature of the confrontation still remains hazy, but the dashboard camera footage of the traffic stop that led to her arrest is expected to be released on Tuesday along with footage from inside the Waller County Jail.
