DonTrunner Robinson

Less-than-lethal force

DonTrunner Robinson died after reportedly choking on a small bag of crack cocaine he swallowed when six masked officers dressed in black kicked in his door as they served a no-knock search warrant at 4:45 p.m. The parish Coroner's Office ruled Robinson's death accidental, but Robinson's family said four unidentified officers beat him so viciously that he was unable to swallow the bag and it got lodged in his throat, causing his death. "If you have a small bag that you could easily swallow and I stood here and pounded on you and stomped on you, you wouldn't be able to swallow it," said Elbert Guillory, one of the two attorneys representing the family. Guillory also is a Republican state senator from Opelousas. The other two officers handcuffed Robinson's wife and a landscaper at the house, according to the lawsuit. After the beating, the lawsuit stated, officers placed Robinson and his wife close to each other. She noticed her husband was having trouble breathing and begged officers to take his handcuffs off and help him, but they allegedly refused. The officers wrote in the search warrant that they recovered one small crack cocaine rock, one gram of crack cocaine, two suspected marijuana cigars, a suspected crack pipe, some hydrocodone pills and 19 grams of crack cocaine from Robinson's body.