Coroner calls for review of Tasers after death of Marc Cole

Marc Cole was Tasered three times while behaving erratically after taking cocaine

A coroner has called for a review of repeated Tasering after a man died following three activations.

Marc Cole, 30, was Tasered for more than 40 seconds by a police officer after behaving erratically in Falmouth, Cornwall in May 2017.

Coroner Geraint Williams said there was "no understanding about the potential for incremental risk with multiple Taser activations".

He added there was "limited data" on Taser effects on vulnerable people.

Earlier this year an inquest jury concluded the Taser use had "more than a trivial impact" on Mr Cole's death.

Mr Williams has written a preventing future deaths report for the Home Office and the College of Policing.

"In evidence it was clear that there is no understanding about the potential for incremental risk with multiple Taser activations, and no training provided as to the maximum number of activations, nor of their duration which is appropriate or safe," he said in his report.

Paranoid behaviour

Mr Cole, who was struggling after the recent death of his father, had taken a large amount of cocaine and was displaying paranoid behaviour in front of friends.

He was seen to be slashing his own throat and neck with a kitchen knife.

Police arrived and - fearing for their own lives and Mr Cole's - an officer discharged a Taser three times.

The jury concluded Mr Cole died from excess use of cocaine resulting in paranoid and erratic behaviour, with the use of a Taser having a more than trivial impact on his cardiac arrest.

Mr Williams has called for "a wholesale review of the effects of multiple Taser activations and the effects of sustained activations - whether in isolation or in combination" so that better training can be provided to the police.