Stun Gun Babies- stunned, not tasered, but damaged nonetheless
January 31, 2008 – 7:11 pm
This week an Oregon man was sentenced to 4 years in prison for using a stun gun on his toddler son in January of last year. A quick web search finds similar incidents in 1994 and 2006, one resulting in a death. Electroshock is simply too easy.
Rian Wittman agreed to a plea bargain. The sentence was imposed Friday. The child’s mother first saw marks she at first believed to be a rash on the boy in January 2007. After a second incident in February, doctors at Samaritan Albany General Hospital found numerous wounds conforming to the stun gun’s electrode pattern.
In November of 2006 a man from Somerset, Pennsylvania, shocked his infant daughter with a stun gun repeatedly over a period of several weeks. Brandon Alan Austill, 21, was charged with six counts of aggravated assault and eight counts of reckless endangerment. The baby’s injuries- not all from the stun gun- included a broken left tibia, broken left ulna, broken left femur, face fractures and two skull fractures. In July of 2007 he was sentenced to 7 to 30 years in prison.
In November of 1994 a woman from Peoria, IL, killed her 7-month-old nephew with a stun gun in an effort to stop his crying. Francine Knox, 37, also the foster mother of the baby Brandon Jordan, used the stun gun repeatedly to silence the child as he cried through the night. She was convicted in June of 1995.
None of these weapons were tasers. They were stun guns with electrodes that must be pressed against the victim’s skin to deliver a shock, the same way a taser is used in drive-stun mode. These sad incidents are the consequence of the proliferation of electric weapons. Sick people used them on infants and toddlers as helpless as handcuffed detainees tasered by zealous cops.