Taser Show

When Sanders refused to dress himself the officer began to handcuff him. Chief Strom says the officer decided to use the Taser because Sanders pulled away after one handcuff was on. The dangling handcuff could have been used as a weapon, Strom says. The officer, adds Strom, first deployed the Taser gun from a distance. When Sanders still failed to comply, the officer applied the Taser directly to his butt and then to his thigh. University police took Sanders to a hospital to remove the Taser prongs from his skin, then on to the St. Louis County Jail.

Kyle Hamilton, a 20-year-old student at University of Missouri-St. Louis, watched the incident from outside the Mallinckrodt Student Center, where he was smoking with his friend from Wash. U. Hamilton snapped a few pictures as officers led Sanders away. Hamilton didn't learn of Sanders' identity until the following Sunday when Sanders contacted him through Facebook. He wrote that he was "the guy who got tased," and asked for copies of the pictures. Hamilton added Sanders to his Facebook account as a "friend" and shared the pictures. Sanders' Facebook profile says he hails from Austin, Texas, and attended Oberlin College in Ohio before coming to Wash. U.

After the Girl Talk show was cut short, people shouted, "Don't Tase me, bro," a reference to the University of Florida student who was hit with a Taser at a John Kerry forum in September. Although the stun gun has become the non-lethal weapon of choice, Hamilton says, "A lot of people there didn't think they were actually going to Tase him."

Thornton says she didn't know much about the student who earned Wash. U. a recent mention on MTV. "It's a little bit of a concern that this 22-year-old man didn't have his own friends looking out for him, saying, 'Dude, you're a mess. Get out of here,'" she says. "I don't think the broader community was looking out for each other that evening."