Why did officers use a taser on an 87 year old woman?

CHATSWORTH, Georgia (WDEF) – A north Georgia family questions why police used a Taser on an 87 year old woman.

The incident happened Friday afternoon at the Boys and Girls Club in Chatsworth.

Chatsworth Police were called to respond to reports of a woman with a knife.

Martha Al-Bishara was on the grounds with a steak knife in hand, cutting dandelions in the lawn.

They found her near three boys and a chain link fence.

When they approached and ordered her to drop the knife, she turned and headed downhill.

The officer said she looked at them, but did not respond and only kept wandering away.

The chief told the officer to pull out his taser.

He got in front of her and continued to order her loudly to drop the knife, with no luck.

He says she was not threatening, and was generally unresponsive to them.

But she carried the knife about stomach level, extended.

When she got within five feet of the officer, he fired the taser into her chest.

She dropped to the ground and dropped the knife.

The officers then cuffed the woman and took her away.

As they walked her back, the woman’s daughter-in-law pulled up.

She said Al-Bishara is Syrian, and does not speak English. She also has dementia.

She lives next door and often takes the knife to cut the wildflowers.

Officials at the Boys and Girls Club say they have told her to stay off their property.

On Friday, a man at the club told her again that she needed to leave, and she walked toward him with the knife.  So he called 9-1-1.

But a relative of the woman questions the response.

He is a former Dalton police officer himself.

And he tells the Daily Citizen-News, she wasn’t a threat to anyone.

He says there isn’t a fence blocking off the property from their home.

But officers say she did eventually cross through a hole in a fence at the club.

Al-Bishara seems to have recovered, physically.

She faces charges of Criminal Trespass and Obstruction of an Officer.