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Woman whose husband died at the hands of detectives who tied him to a chair, stripped him and pepper sprayed him set to go to court after 2 and half year lapse. Viewer warning advised.

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A wife continues to seek justice and maybe this time as she heads to court she just might get it.

His only crime was that he was publicly intoxicated but in the end Nick Christie met with a horrifying kind of death that has not led to a single arrest for those known to be responsible for his death.

The story begins 2 and half years ago with a 62 year Ohio man whom according to his wife, Joyce Christie was acting very much out of character days before lapsing into a wild drawn out drinking binge.

Concerned Mrs Christie pleads with officers who have by now come across her intoxicated husband in Florida to take him to hospital where he could be administered his heart medication but instead they insist on taking him to the local jail house where he is stripped naked, chained to a chair and over the course of a 48 hour period subjected to up to ten doses of pepper spray before incurring a heart attack and dying.

But what was the point of the detainment and pepper spray in the first place? :

myfoxtampabayTom DePolis spent more than 30 years in law enforcement at the Tampa Police Department and Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. He’s seen first-hand the effects of pepper spray and knows its limitations. He can see no reason for deputies to repeatedly pepper spray Nick Christie since he was already in custody.

“The purpose is to temporarily incapacitate someone — temporarily, that’s the key word, so you can restrain them,” says DePolis.

Temporarily incapicitate him? Was Mr Christie so drunk that he needed to be restrained for up to 48 hours. Two hours yes, maybe even 4 or 5 hours. But to then subject Nick Christie to the humiliation of being stripped naked and then repeatedly pepper sprayed? Surely the officers had something in else in mind?

Photo shows pepper-sprayed prisoner: MyFoxTAMPABAY.com

Monshay Gibbs was a deputy trainee at the jail at the time. In a video deposition, she testified that she thought the way Nick Christie was treated was excessive.

“He had a spit mask on and was naked,” she said on the video while under oath. Gibbs testified that Christie pleaded with guards to take off the spit mask because he couldn’t breathe.

Pleading with officers to take off his the spit mask because he couldn’t breathe? Is this the way individuals who have been brought of the street drunk are treated? Is the way anyone for that matter should be treated? Did the officers confuse this instance for some sort of terror/interogation mission? And who gave the go ahead for this treatment, why was there no effort to subsume the angst of the evening?

He later died at the hospital. His heart failed from the shock of the pepper spray. The Lee County Sheriffs Office declined to comment on our story because of Joyce Christie’s wrongful death lawsuit, which is scheduled for trial the middle of next year.

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