Still: Police dashcam video

A police officer with incriminating information in connection with the jailhouse death of Sandra Bland says that he was threatened by county prosecutors into staying silent, the AP reports. Sandra Bland died in jail, under troubling and suspicious circumstances, three days after she was pulled over for a traffic violation.

Officer Michael Kelley was one of the first to be called to the scene of the arrest as backup. He says that the police left out key details from the report and that Bland appeared injured.

“She had a large mark on her head. Maybe she fell when she was in handcuffs. Maybe she got kicked,” Kelley told the Huffington Post. “My opinion is that he messed up,” he added “He did not have probable cause to detain her after he pulled her out of the car.”

Kelley also says he overheard state trooper Brian Encinia telling his supervisor over the phone, “I don’t know what I’m going to charge her with yet,” after he arrested Sandra Bland. The Huffington Post:

In all, Kelley said that officials whittled his two-page rough draft down to less than a page and entered it into the official record without his approval. He said he also wanted to testify before the grand jury investigating Bland’s arrest, but that Assistant District Attorney Warren Diepraam threatened him.

“He told me it wouldn’t be good for my career,” Kelley said. “Then I told him I was going to talk to Sandra Bland’s mother’s attorney, and he told me I was going to be beneath the jail.”

The prosecutors strongly denied Kelley’s accusations, first made public by an activist via the Houston Chronicle.

Kelley himself is embattled. He was suspended and indicted for official oppression related to an unlawful arrest earlier this year, after being captured on video using a Taser on a black city councilman.

On July 13, 2015, Sandra Bland, a newly hired student outreach coordinator at a historically black university, was pulled over by state trooper Brian Encinia in Prairie View, Texas near her campus, for failure to signal a lane change. Her interaction with the officer, which was captured in part on dashcam video, became heated as Encina got angry at Bland for not putting out her cigarette. Encinia attempted to drag Bland out of her car, screaming, “I will light you up! Get out!” Video captured by a bystander appears to show Bland, with two officers on top of her, saying: “You just slammed my head into the ground. Do you not even care about that? I can’t even hear. He slammed my fucking head into the ground.”

Bland was ultimately arrested for “assault of a public servant” for allegedly kicking Encinia. Her family was unable to pay for bail and Bland was held in custody until she was found dead in her cell, three days after her arrest.

The Waller County Sheriff’s Office stated that Bland died of self-induced asphyxiation and an autopsy ruled her death a suicide. According to a jail intake form, Bland had admitted to a suicide attempt in 2014. She was not placed on suicide watch. Since then, a jailer admitted under oath that he falsified records in a jail log about checking in on Bland the hour before her death.

Sarah Bland’s mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, is currently pursuing a federal lawsuit against the county, alleging willful and wanton negligence that resulted in her daughter’s death.

In January, Encinia was fired and indicted for a misdemeanor charge of perjury for alleged false statements about the arrest, a charge which is still pending. No one from the jail or the sheriff’s office has been indicted in connection with Bland’s death.

On Wednesday, Geneva Reed-Veal appeared on stage at the Democratic National Convention with the mothers of Michael Brown (whose killer, a cop, walked free), Eric Garner (whose killer, a cop, walked free), Dontré Hamilton (whose killer, a former cop, walked free), Trayvon Martin (whose killer, a neighborhood watchman, walked free), Jordan Davis (whose killer, a man who didn’t like loud music, whose first murder trial was a mistrial; he was convicted in the second trial) and Hadiya Pendleton (who was killed during a crossfire of a possible gang-related shootout, resulting in two indictments of the shooters on multiple counts.)