Questions remain in case of Tasered dad

A lot seems not to add up in the story of a man who was Tasered while trying to leave a Houston hospital with his newborn daughter in the middle of the night — and the part about the man trying to take off in the middle of the night is just the tip of the iceberg. It all took place at The Woman's Hospital of Texas at about 1:30 a.m. Thursday, when 30-year-old William Lewis apparently decided to take his two-day-old baby home. Hospital staff told him he couldn't leave with the baby, but Lewis persisted; when he made it clear he intended to leave anyway, the hospital staff called security. Off-duty HPD officer D.M. Boling, who was working security at the hospital, responded and told Lewis he couldn't leave — but when he did, HPD spokesman Capt. Dwayne Ready said Lewis made "threatening remarks about this being a hostage situation if he were not allowed to leave." Boling then decided to use his Taser on Lewis, which caused Lewis and the baby to drop to the hallway floor. "He was holding the baby when [the officer] tasered him. My baby hit the concrete floor," Lewis' wife, who was still recovering from a C-section at the time and saw the exchange from her hospital room, told the Chronicle. "When I went down to pick her up to take her to the neo unit, her scream was so loud and so bad I thought she was dying right there."

For the record, the baby is fine, though Lewis' wife (whom the Chronicle didn't name) said she's "not as calm as she was before." What's unclear at this point is exactly what led to the incident Thursday morning — why, for example, Lewis decided to leave the hospital with the baby at 1:30 in the morning, before following any of the appropriate procedures and even before his wife had been released. And there are signs he wasn't just excited to get home and start earning his World's Best Dad suncatcher: Ready said the baby's mother had called police April 2, a week before she gave birth, saying that "her unborn child's father called her and made threats on her and the child's life." And then there were the reported hostage threats as Lewis tried to leave with the baby — like we said, something's not adding up here.

HPD is standing behind Boling's decision to use the Taser on Lewis. Though the baby ended up falling to the floor in the incident, Ready said the outcome could have been much worse if officers had engaged Lewis in a physical struggle. "The Taser instantly immobilizes the suspect and does not allow that person to cause any other danger or harm," he said. "If the officers had to engage the suspect in a physical altercation, neither could have kept an eye on the baby." Hospital officials issued a statement about the incident, pointing out that patients are educated about safety procedures when they're admitted, but they didn't say whether they thought Lewis should have been leaving with the baby. As for the mother, she insists Lewis meant no harm: "The only thing that endangered by child was that police officer who tased my child when Will was holding the baby," she said (and for the record, no, there's no indication that the Taser was used directly on the baby). "I don't know how it went from us leaving to this."