Taser Gun Incident Motivates Second Winnipeg Teenager To Speak Out

July 25, 2008 7:20 a.m. EST

Winnipeg, Canada (AHN) - The death of 17-year-old Michael Langan this week, which was blamed on a Taser gun incident, has motivated another 16-year old girl to describe being zapped three times by four Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers.

In November, 2007, RCMP officers arrested an unidentified girl for unauthorized use of the family's van. At the time she was drunk and accompanied by female friends.

When the girl was told she would be held overnight at a local jail, she resisted and attempted to hit the policemen. She alleges that four male officers held her down, disrobed and Tasered three times on her legs and in the groin. She said the third hit lasted between 5 to 8 seconds.

The RCMP conducted an internal probe about the incident, which absolved the officers from criminal wrongdoing, according to the girl's lawyer. Her family will file a public complaint against the four RCMP.

Meanwhile, Sharon Shymko, Langan's mother, recalled police officers coming to her home in the middle of the night to ask for her son's photo. However, they did not inform her that her son was dead.

While Shymko admits her 17-year-old son had his share of problems, she maintains he was a decent child, who went out of his way to run errands for his grandmother, particularly to fill her prescriptions.

Shymko said that after her son completed high school, his goal was to be a cabinet-maker. He planned to continue eleventh grade at a Winnipeg high school after the family returned a few weeks ago from British Columbia.