“And I know everyone is going to say: ‘An 87-year-old woman?  How big a threat can she be?’”  Chief Etheridge told The Daily Citizen-News of Dalton on Monday. “ She still had a knife.” 

“I completely understand, and if I hadn’t been there and it would come across my desk, that is the first thing I would ask as well,” he said. 

“Why did we Tase an 87-year-old woman?”  he added. “ I guess in that circumstance, I am glad I was there and saw it firsthand and understand why it occurred.  An 87-year-old woman with a knife still has the ability to hurt an officer.” 

He did not respond to requests by phone and email for comment on Friday. 

Chief Etheridge told the newspaper that the officers’ goal had been to not resort to deadly force.  At one point, he took his own knife out and threw it on the ground, trying to indicate to the woman what he wanted her to do with her knife, it said. 

The stun gun, he said, “was the lowest use of force we could have used to simply stop that threat at the time.” 

The newspaper also published a description of a body camera video taken by the third officer. 

The video shows Chief Etheridge, who had his gun drawn, and Officer Marshall, who was holding his Taser, urging the woman to drop the knife.  But the recording is from a distance and what the woman is doing with the knife cannot be determined clearly, the newspaper said. 

Ms. Bishara’s case was being transferred from municipal court to the state Superior Court, said Bert Poston, the district attorney for the Conasauga Judicial Circuit.  He said he had not seen the documents yet, but he understood that the chief had requested the transfer to Superior Court so an independent prosecutor could review it.