Graphic video released in Catskill Taser scuffle that fatally burned man

ALBANY – Soon after 29-year-old Jason Jones walked into the Catskill Police station on October 30, there was a confrontation involving him and three village police officers.

During the course of the confrontation, he doused himself with hand sanitizer, and a physical scuffle broke out.

However, one of the officers then pulled out a connective electric weapon, a CEW, commonly referred to as a Taser. When the electric wattage struck Jones, the chemical reaction with the sanitizer cause his skin to catch on fire.

After spending six weeks at the Westchester Medical Center Trauma & Burn Center, Jones died on December 15.

Local attorney Kevin Luibrand, representing the Jones family, says he found witnesses who were outside the police station looking through the glass, who have supplemented his case.

Luibrand argues Jones was unarmed, he wasn’t threatening anyone, he was not making any physical movement toward anyone, and the CEW should not have been used.

Luibrand says officers were fully aware that he had put sanitizer on his own torso because they saw him do it, and besides, he said, it’s part of a police officer’s training not to use the CEW on a flammable substance.

Even more unsettling for Luibrand was what he saw on the video from the police station lobby. After they ignited Jones, instead of trying to help. Two officers ran out of the room, while the other went to a corner and watched him burn.

After inhaling the heat and the fire, Luibrand says it destroyed the lining of Jones’s lungs.

The Attorney General’s office, which is currently investigating the case, released the tape on Friday in hopes of "increasing transparency and strengthening public trust."