Elderly woman slammed hard by police at Walmart

It's very hard to tell from the video, but to me (and of course I could be totally wrong about it) the knife looked like a dinner or butter knife.

But, police are trained to react in certain ways and that's what they did.

I've continued to wonder if the policeman couldn't have taken off his shirt and tossed it over her head while grabbing her knife-hand. It would have saved that fragile old skull from hitting the ground as hard as it appears to in the video.

Anyway, it happened. As others have said, they didn't tase or shoot her. Hopefully she'll be assessed by the mental health people, who'll take whatever steps are necessary.

As an aside, we knew a lovely family whose lives were torn to bits because the grandmother had become dangerous and was attempting to stab her elderly husband. There was no rhyme nor reason to it. She'd be fine, in the kitchen cooking a meal for example, and then she'd suddenly grab a knife and lunge at her husband who might have been taking a shower or resting in a chair, or even sleeping.

Her middle-aged daughter and son had to take it in turns to stay with their parents in order to prevent a tragedy, which meant taking leave of their own families and jobs for two to three weeks at a time. They were reluctant to place their mother in a aged-care home, where she would be placed on medication, surrounded by strangers. She'd been a perfect mother, apparently, and never violent. Sad when this happens, just as it's sad to see that elderly woman in the OP's video