'Horrendous sound': family of man who died after Tasering demand answers

Family, friends and neighbours knew Marc Cole as a gentle, popular man who doted on his two young sons and lovingly nursed his father when he was terminally ill.

The loss of his father affected him deeply and Cole’s mental health declined. He complained of severe headaches and began to suffer paranoia and delusional beliefs.

On 23 May 2017 Cole, from Falmouth in Cornwall, took cocaine and, thinking people were out to “get” him, picked up a kitchen knife.

Police arrived and Cole, a painter and decorator, suffered a cardiac arrest after being Tasered three times for a total of 43 seconds.

Since then his family, while struggling with grief, have worked hard to get answers about the events leading up to the death of the 30-year-old painter and decorator.

They were alarmed to discover that the officer who Tasered Cole did not at first admit that he had activated his device three times, and believe police do not have sufficient training on how to deal with people suffering a mental health crisis.

Cole’s sister Lisa Cole said: “As family we were hoping we would get clarification about those minutes leading up to Marc’s death.”

But she said conflicting accounts of what had happened meant that the full picture remains unclear. “It’s sickening, an insult to Marc’s suffering and to Marc’s family. If you have officers who aren’t being straightforward and transparent that leads to lack of accountability. If there’s a lack of accountability lessons will not be learned.

“We would like an urgent review around the Tasering of vulnerable people. We would like a review at the use of multiple Tasering. The training around Tasering vulnerable people seems very sparse.”

Related: ‘It should be the last option, not the first’: what's behind the rise in Tasering?

Lisa, who was a mental health practitioner and is currently retraining to become a counsellor-psychotherapist, said her brother was gentle and family-orientated.

“Marc was a warm and straightforward young man,” she said. “He had a heart of gold. He would do anything for anyone. People wanted to be around Marc and he lived for his two young children. The small moments with them made him very happy.

“He nursed dad thought terminal cancer from start to end. I think that was the beginning of the end for Marc – he unravelled afterwards. There’s a history of bipolar in the family. I think that was what Marc was contending with.”

On the day of his death, Cole went to a friend’s home. He had a kitchen knife which friends have described him as holding as if ready to defend himself. At about 9pm, he jumped or fell out of his friend’s home through a first-floor window.

He went into a neighbour’s garden and caught her with the knife, causing a superficial injury to her leg in what appeared to be an accident.

Other neighbours saw Marc wandering in the street. One witness said he looked like a “lost soul”. A woman walking home from work called the police non-emergency number, 101. Asked why she didn’t call 999, she said: “I didn’t feel threatened by Marc.”

The police arrived and ordered Cole to drop the knife. He began to self-harm and PC Timothy Wilson discharged his Taser. A witness said: “The sound of it was horrendous. It’s a sound I never want to hear again. You could hear the electricity running through it.”

Cole was hit by the Taser three times for a total of 43 seconds. A second officer used his baton to strike the knife out of Cole’s hand. Cole was handcuffed and shouted for his mother, asking: “What have I done?”

When paramedics arrived there was confusion, as they had been called to attend to the woman who had been cut with the knife. Cole lost consciousness and went into cardiac arrest.

During the inquest in Truro, Cornwall, Wilson admitted giving inaccurate initial statements about how many times he had activated the Taser. He said he was acting on legal advice.

Wilson said he feared for his own safety and said Cole was holding the knife to his own throat and seemed determined to cause himself an injury. “It was clear I needed to do something,” Wilson said.

Lisa said: “Marc was clearly urgently needing help. He was confused disorientated, suffering psychosis. He suffered 43 seconds of Tasering at at time he was scared and delusional. His brain would have been racing.”

Cole’s death came five years after that of Thomas Orchard, a 32-year-old caretaker with mental health issues who died after being restrained by Devon and Cornwall officers while he was suffering a crisis.

In 2019, the Office of the chief constable for Devon and Cornwall was found guilty of a breach of health and safety law over Orchard’s death. The force has said it has learned lessons about how to deal with people in a mental health crisis, but Lisa Cole said it appeared the training “still isn’t robust or thorough enough”.

The three years since Cole’s death have been very difficult for the family. “It’s been three long years,” said Lisa. “That’s really hard. In that time you are gagged, you don’t really have a voice. You are marginalised as a family.

“If the police had said: “We panicked – in Cornwall we don’t see this a lot,’ I would have had more respect for them and understood. This has destroyed everyone’s lives.”