Jailhouse death of US black woman stirs suspicions

Chicago (United States)

The jailhouse death of a black woman imprisoned after allegedly getting combative during a traffic stop in rural Texas has raised suspicions amid heightened racial tensions in the United States.

Prosecutors said Monday they plan to release a security camera video that shows nobody entered or left the cell of Sandra Bland, 28, before her body was discovered in what authorities said was an apparent suicide.

But, with tensions inflamed in the wake of a series of high-profile cases of black men being killed by police in disputed circumstances, many people wouldn't trust any official account of the incident.

"It is right to resist simple explanations for extraordinary events," New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote.

"Indeed, because state violence echoes through the African-American experience in this country, it is even understandable if black people might occasionally experience a sort of "Phantom Lynching Syndrome."

A video of Bland's arrest that shows her pinned to the ground after being pulled over for failing to signal a lane change helped fuel suspicions that something nefarious may have happened.

"Thank you for recording," she says as she's led handcuffed into a cruiser."For a traffic signal slammed me into the ground and everything."