Hundreds bid farewell to woman who died in Texas jail cell

LISLE, Ill. — Family and friends of an Illinois woman found dead in a Texas jail remembered her Saturday as a “courageous voice” for social justice and promised to keep fighting for clarity on the circumstances surrounding her death.

Hundreds of people attended Sandra Bland’s funeral near the Chicago suburb where she grew up. They celebrated her life with words and songs of praise, and her mother danced in the church aisle with her arms raised. She and other mourners, though, said they were still struggling to understand how a traffic stop for failing to use a turn signal escalated into a physical confrontation and landed her in the cell where authorities say she killed herself three days later.

The Harris County, Texas, medical examiner’s office determined through an autopsy that Bland hanged herself with a plastic bag. The 28-year-old woman’s family has questioned the finding, saying she was excited about starting a new job and wouldn’t have taken her own life.

“I’m going to find out what happened to my baby,” her mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, said in remarks that brought mourners to their feet. “My baby has spoken. She’s still speaking and no, she didn’t kill herself.”

The traffic stop, which was captured on police dash cam video and on a bystander’s cellphone, and Bland’s death in custody have resonated on social media, with many grouping it with other prominent U.S. cases involving confrontations between the police and blacks over the past year.

Bland had spoken out about that issue and others in a series of videos she posted online this year with the hashtag “SandySpeaks.”

Mourners at Saturday’s funeral wore T-shirts with the tag. One person had it scrawled across a car window. Some took to Twitter with the hashtag “SandySTILLSpeaks.”

Crowds filed past her open casket to catch a last glimpse of Bland, who was dressed in an all-white suit with roses on top of her.