After crashing his Honda Pilot van, police officers reportedly fired at least four electric shocks with a taser pistol at Ambler, even though Ambler had warned that he had heart problems and also said at least four times, 'I can't breathe.'
Javier Ambler was driving home from a friendly poker game in the early hours of March 28, 2019, when a Williamson County sheriff’s deputy noticed that he failed to dim the headlights of his SUV to oncoming traffic.
Twenty-eight minutes later, the black father of two sons lay dying on a North Austin street after deputies held him down and used Tasers on him four times while a crew from A&E’s reality show “Live PD” filmed.
Ambler, a 40-year-old former postal worker, repeatedly pleaded for mercy, telling deputies he had congestive heart failure and couldn’t breathe. He cried, “Save me,” before deputies deployed a final shock.
His death never made headlines.
Now, after months of questioning and requests for information from the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE-TV, recently released documents and police video shed light on that fatal night at a time when the nation confronts decades of injustice against minorities by law enforcement.
