Footage Released Of American Woman Killed By Police Officers

Video footage showing the events leading to the death of US citizen Tracey Lynn Brown at Istanbul Atatürk Airport in 2013, when she suffocated due to police officers applying too much pressure on her while holding her on the ground, has been released.

Brown, who arrived at the airport on April 4, 2013, from Tashkent and was to travel to Chicago, was waiting in the international arrivals terminal. According to the footage, Brown went into a room belonging to the department of passport control at 9:48 pm, and about four minutes later she was dragged out of the room by the police. Brown, who left the scene after the incident, returned after six hours.

The footage showed the police putting handcuffs on her and then putting her in a room. After a few minutes, Brown somehow frees herself of the handcuffs and the police officers knock her to the ground, handcuffing her from behind and exerting pressure on her with their legs and arms for about 17 minutes. A doctor is seen arriving and giving the woman a sedative without examining her. The police officers, who release the pressure on the woman after the doctor leaves the room, realize the woman is not breathing and call the doctor back. The doctor administers CPR for seven minutes and then sends her to a hospital.

According to the reports in Turkish media, the woman died on April 18, 2013, at the hospital and the forensic report confirmed that she died due to the intense pressure put on her chest and neck.

The Bakırköy Chief Public Prosecutor's Office filed a criminal complaint against the 12 police officers and the doctor, Mesut Ö., who all face jail time of 12 years to 16 years. The fourth hearing of the case will be in October.

In their statements, the police officers argued that when the woman first entered the transfer room she angrily asked about her daughter and was belligerent to them. The woman is seen being dragged on the ground by the police officers four minutes after she entered the room in the video footage.

According to the video footage, the woman is seen running into the room six hours after her first entry. The police officers claimed in their statements that the woman was holding a pair of scissors and that she wounded one of the officers on his hand while she scattered documents from the desk to the floor. In the footage, the police are seen handcuffing the woman to a chair. However, she manages to get rid of the handcuffs. Then, a group of police officers knock the woman to the ground and apply pressure to her back, hands, feet and neck for 17 minutes, causing her to suffocate.

In the video, the doctor is seen watching the ill treatment by the police officers and not saying anything to Brown, who is unable to move and then he injects a sedative into her while she is on the ground. After the doctor has left the room when the officers noticed that she was not breathing, they called the doctor back again for treatment.
Despite the CPR applied by the doctor she did not show any signs of life. The woman was taken to the hospital. She died 14 days after the incident and a report prepared by the Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) confirmed that she died of pressure applied to her chest and neck.

The Bakırköy Prosecutor's Office requested reports for the third time from the ATK regarding the details of the incident and all three separate reports concluded that the actions of the police officers and Brown's death were linked. The latest report, contrary to the first two ones, put blame on the doctor for failing to intervene while Brown was being held on the ground while pressure was being applied to her, an act that contradicts the rights of patients.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)