Porn Star Sledge Hammer Dies After Being Tasered

Sometimes strength can be a weakness. That may have been the case for porn star Marland Anderson, known by many as Sledge Hammer, who was tased to the point of cardiac arrest by police. According to Anderson's friend, the police may have been intimated by his size and resorted to using a taser instead of other means to subdue him.

Anderson died Friday, five days after police took him to a hospital for attempting suicide, the Los Angeles Times reports. The incident began on April 8 when the police responded to a report of an attempted suicide in the Reseda area. When they arrived, Anderson's girlfriend told the officers that Anderson had tried to hurt himself with a knife, and she had struggled with him for it.

He was then restrained to a gurney and, on the way to the hospital, broke the gurney free from a floor lock and broke a handcuff. At this point, police used a taser to restrain Anderson.

AVN quotes adult film director Stoney Curtis, who described the struggle:

When the cops arrived, Anderson's height (6-foot-4) and bulk intimidated them, and rather than try to subdue him with the manpower available, they began shooting him with their Tasers—"excessively," according to Curtis—to the point where he suffered a heart attack and for all intents and purposes died for 10 minutes until the EMTs were able to restart his heart.

Curtis said that Anderson had massive swelling in his brain and that doctors told Anderson's mother that it was unlikely he'd come out of the coma, XBiz reports. Doctors advised Anderson's mother that even if he did come out of the coma, he would not regain consciousness. So on Thursday night, Anderson's mother took her son off of life support.

Anderson had been dealing with depression, anxiety and a mild form of schizophrenia, all of which were made worse by his marijuana use, according to what Curtis told Luke Is Back. Anderson's girlfriend, Alexa Cruz, wrote in an email to Luke Is Back, "This was not a domestic violence situation at all so I want to make that totally clear. This man was being tortured by his own mind and suffering from severe insomnia."

Fellow porn star Jack Lawrence tweeted about his friend's death: “I still can’t believe that Sledge Anderson is gone. Nine years I have known him. Just THE nicest guy EVER, & so respectful 2 the women in the biz.”

Article can be found in the Huffington Post