Old Woman Picking Flowers Is Shocked To See Cops Pull Tasers On Her

 

Misunderstandings are commonplace in our everyday lives, and most of the time a breakdown in communication doesn’t have any real, lasting impact. Most of us just shrug our shoulders and move on after an instance of miscommunication… but what if a few mixed-up words could mean the difference between life and death?

This was the case for one Georgia woman when a simple misunderstanding with police escalated to a deadly level. Fearing for their own safety, the officers made a split-second decision — and it’ll haunt them for the rest of their days.

For 22 years, Martha Al-Bishara has lived alongside her husband in their Chatsworth, Georgia, home. A native of Syria, the 87-year-old continues to uphold many of the daily practices she learned while growing up in her home country.

ABC News

Like her mother before her, Martha enjoys foraging for greens and vegetables to prepare in meals for her family. Oftentimes, Martha and her husband can be seen picking plants from the lush patches of forest around their neighborhood.

Washington Post

On one day in particular, Martha was hoping to pick some dandelions for dinner, a task that had become routine to her. Grabbing her trusty kitchen knife, Martha left her home and crossed the street to one of her usual foraging spots.

Conall / Flickr

Unlike the other public green spots, however, this patch of woods was owned by the Boys & Girls Club, a national nonprofit that funds after-school programs for young people. Martha had foraged here before, but this time she wasn't alone.

Daily Citizen-News

A few yards off, a Boys & Girls Club employee named Tanner watched as the knife-wielding woman slowly made her way onto the property. Feeling somewhat threatened by her presence, Tanner called the police.

"This lady is walking on the bike trail, she has a knife and she won’t leave," Tanner told the operator in a call placed at around 4:30 PM. "She told me she doesn’t speak English and keeps walking up the trail with a knife.”

ABC News

Tanner continued: "She's old, so she can't get around too well, but, looks like she's walking around looking for something, like, vegetation to cut down or something."

When asked if Martha had come at him with the knife, Tanner replied: "No, she just brought the knife onto the property in her hand. She didn't try to attack anybody or anything."

Two officers along with the chief of the Chatsworth Police Department were dispatched to the scene. When they arrived, another Boys and Girls Club employee led them to the area where Martha was last spotted.

Georgia LawEnforcement Photos / Flickr

They were quick to find the 87-year-old, who was casually collecting dandelions along a dirt path. But when the officers issued a verbal command for her to stop foraging, Martha didn't seem to understand. She just kept cutting.

Homestead Acres

At one point, the chief even tossed his own pocket knife on the ground and picked it up in an attempt to illustrate what the officers were trying to get her to do. Again, Martha just stared. That's when they pulled out their stun guns.

"We kept telling her to drop the knife,” the police report detailing the incident recounted. "The female would look at us. Her demeanor was calm even seeing us with our [stun] guns out."

Springfield News-Sun

It was then that Martha began approaching the officers, the knife still clutched in her hand. Seeing no other choice, one of the officers fired his taser, sending the elderly woman crumpling to the ground.

ABC7 Chicago

The officers quickly handcuffed Martha, who was both terrified and confused. She was then taken to the Chatsworth police station, where she was charged with obstruction of an officer and criminal trespassing.

Google News

Chatsworth Police Chief Josh Etheridge defended the decision. "In my opinion, it was the lowest use of force we could have used to simply stop that threat at the time," he told the Daily Citizen-News.

Daily Citizen-News

Etheridge continued: "And I know everyone is going to say, 'An 87-year-old woman? How big a threat can she be?' She still had a knife. An 87-year-old woman with a knife still has the ability to hurt an officer."

WSFA12

Martha's family, however, had a different take on the matter. Not only did they believe the officers unnecessarily escalated the situation, but that their tasering of the elderly woman was completely out of line.

CBS Chicago

"[They] clearly stated she was not a threat to anybody and told them she was gathering vegetation," said Jeff Dean, an attorney working on behalf of the family to get Martha's charges dropped. "Clearly, there was no threat."

Amy Way Photography

Martha fully recovered from the incident, but her family said the confrontation with the officers took more of a mental toll on her than a physical one. For Martha, the escalation from a normal day of picking flowers to one spent in a jail cell was something she just couldn't wrap her head around.

Oxygen

"She is still repeating the incident over in her mind and telling us she didn’t mean for this to happen and apologizing that she didn’t want to bring this on us," her granddaughter, Martha Douhne, told the Daily Citizen-News. "She is having trouble sleeping and is stressed."

News Channel 9

An internal investigation has been launched by the Chatsworth Police Department to look further into the incident, but as of now, no criminal wrongdoing has been established.

If the case between the Al-Bishara family and the CPD were to escalate, however, then the Georgia Bureau of Investigation would likely have to intervene. Believe it or not Martha is not the first elderly woman to have an unusual run in with the law...

Metro

Death can be difficult for anyone to deal with, especially when the person they've lost was their significant other. This was especially true for Jean Stevens who, at 91 years old, had seen more than her fair share of people coming and going.

When her husband of 60 years, James, passed away in 1999, Jean simply couldn't bear it. The couple made so many great memories together over the course of their marriage, and she didn't know what to do after she was suddenly left alone without her best friend.

Jean attended the funeral, along with her friends and family, but she was having a difficult time accepting the fact James was gone forever. So, she decided to do something most people would never even consider...

After James's burial, Jean had his embalmed body dug up from the cemetery just so she could see him again! It was certainly a strange request, but the groundskeeper granted it for her. But that wasn't all...

If that wasn't strange enough, Jean took her obsession with seeing her husband one step further: she actually brought James's corpse home with her and kept it hidden in her garage!

Jean's odd desire to keep her deceased husband's body in her home didn't end there. She had the exact same thing done for her twin sister when she passed away 10 years later in 2009!

Jean kept an old couch pushed up against one of the walls inside her garage; this is where she placed James's corpse. She kept her sister in a spare room of her home, and she used perfume to mask the growing scent of the decaying bodies.

Jean kept both family members in her home for quite some time, and she made sure to do everything in her power to make sure they were "comfortable." She treated them as though they were still alive, and for a while, neighbors suspected nothing...

However, police were eventually tipped off to Jean's antics and they came to remove the bodies from her home. When they asked her why she had done it, she simply said that she wanted to be able to touch and talk to her loved ones at any time.

Fortunately for Jean, authorities were actually willing to let her keep the bodies—provided she built a proper storage facility on the property. She obliged, and her completed mausoleum can hold up to eight bodies. It's creepy, but efficient...

Jean's story wasn't the only case where death played a prominent role in the interior design (for lack of a better phrase) of a home. Many people around the world have houses that seem to emanate eerie energy. Take this home located in Hartford, Connecticut...

Realtors had a tough time selling this house because of its rather creepy interior. Just take a look inside to see for yourself. With its red motif, would you want to shack up in a place like this?

You'll immediately notice the peculiar blood-like designs that covered the walls in the kitchen. Not only that, but it also appeared as if the cupboards were slashed with a butcher's knife. It truly looked like the set of a horror film...

The bloody prints weren't only found in the kitchen, though. You could see them in just about every nook and cranny of the home—including on the steps and all over the walls!

This house in Connecticut may not be as unusual as Jean's in Pennsylvania, but they both had a similar eerie feel to them... especially since Jean actually had deceased bodies in her garage. It would take a brave soul to visit either of these homes!

Of course, the red stains that covered the walls in the Connecticut home weren't actually blood, but they sure did look like it. Whoever owned the home before putting it on the market had a very unusual sense of design...

The backyard even had a makeshift gazebo that looked as if it could double as a place for satanic rituals. It would be difficult to truly enjoy the outdoor space with a creaky looming structure like this, huh?

Not many people showed interest in purchasing the house, and it was easy to see why. At present, the home was still on the market, though the real estate agent remained convinced that someone would come along who was interested in moving in.