TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A Senate Democrat has filed a bill that would lead to the state paying $1.75 million to the estate of a women who was critically injured and later died after a Florida Highway Patrol officer used a stun gun on her.
The bill (SB 32), filed this week by Sen. Audrey Gibson, D-Jacksonville, stems from the 2011 arrest of 20-year-old Danielle Maudsley on traffic charges.
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Maudsley was taken to a Florida Highway Patrol substation in Pinellas Park for processing. While handcuffed, Maudsley tried to flee by running out a side door. A trooper followed and fired his stun gun into her back, causing the woman to fall to the pavement, the bill says.
Maudsley suffered a traumatic brain injury and remained in a vegetative state until she died in September 2013, according to the bill.
A $1.95 million settlement was reached in 2015, but sovereign immunity laws prevented the state from paying more than $200,000 without legislative passage of what is known as a "claim" bill.
Gibson's bill, which is filed for the 2017 session, would direct payment of the remaining $1.75 million.