Emergency medicine physician contradicts other experts about Ellis' cause of death; police trainer says officers' use-of-force was "appropriate." - The defense called Emergency Medical Physician Dr. Jennifer Stankus to the witness stand on Thursday, where she contradicted the state’s medical experts about what type of heart attack Manuel Ellis experienced on the night that he died. Ellis, a 33-year-old Black man, died in Tacoma police custody on the night of March 3, 2020. Three Tacoma police officers, Matthew Collins, Christopher Burbank and Timothy Rankine, face charges in his death. Stankus is a contract emergency physician at Madigan Army Medical Center on Joint Base Lewis-McChord. She was previously in the naval reserves out of high school before becoming a military police officer. She worked as a police officer again for about two years during college, then went to law school in Colorado. She later went to medical school at the University of Washington and graduated in 2009. The state’s medical experts and the former Pierce County Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Clark all determined that oxygen deprivation was the catalyst for Ellis’ cardiac arrest, but in front of the jury on Thursday, Stankus said she believed it was the other way around. Read more: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/death-of-manuel-ellis/medical-experts-testify-tacoma-officers-trial-manuel-ellis/281-2ac9096c-ff6b-405a-aaa4-bf66de2a7f46