Encinia had issued 1,600 mostly minor tickets in less than twelve months, a pattern of pretextual stops -- using little-enforced infractions to conduct random searches. On the afternoon of July 10, 2015, he began following Bland in Prairie View. Dashcam footage shows Encinia's demeanor shifting sharply after he asks Bland if she is irritated and she answers honestly. He had already written a routine warning. Then he asked her to put out her cigarette. She refused. He ordered her out of the car. She asked why. He told her she was under arrest. When she did not comply, he drew his Taser and said, "I will light you up." He forced her to the ground and arrested her. Bland recorded parts of the encounter on her own cell phone, but that footage would not become public until 2019. Officers took her to the Waller County Jail and placed her in a cell alone.

Bland's bail was set at $5,000. Her family scrambled to secure the $500 needed for a bondsman. An inmate in the adjacent cell, Alexandria Pyle, later told media that Bland seemed distraught, was crying frequently, and was upset that a friend had not come to bail her out. Three days after her arrest, on July 13, 2015, Bland was found hanged in her cell. The Harris County Institute of Forensic Science ruled her death a suicide by asphyxiation. Investigations by Texas authorities and the FBI found that the Waller County Jail had failed to follow required policies -- guards did not perform timely checks on inmates, and employees had not completed mandated mental health training. The jail's intake forms contained contradictory information about whether Bland had previously contemplated suicide.

Within three days of Bland's death, 200,000 people had tweeted her name. At least twelve protests were held across the country. The Prairie View City Council renamed the section of University Drive where Bland was arrested to Sandra Bland Parkway. Encinia was placed on administrative duties for violating traffic stop procedures and was later indicted for perjury -- a grand jury found that his sworn statement claiming he removed Bland from her car "to further conduct a safe traffic investigation" was false. The perjury charge was ultimately dropped in June 2017 in exchange for Encinia's agreement to permanently leave law enforcement. Bland's mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention and became a member of the Mothers of the Movement. In September 2016, the family settled a wrongful death lawsuit for $1.9 million.

Texas Senate Bill 1849 -- the Sandra Bland Act -- went into effect on September 1, 2017. The legislation mandated de-escalation training for police officers, required county jails to divert people with mental health and substance abuse issues toward treatment, and made it easier for defendants with mental illness or intellectual disability to receive personal bonds. Law enforcement agencies must now maintain records documenting the race or ethnicity of all persons detained. In the event of a death in custody, the custodial agency must begin an investigation until an outside agency representative arrives. The case continued to reverberate through American culture: Malcolm Gladwell built much of his 2019 book Talking to Strangers around the encounter, and HBO released the documentary Say Her Name: The Life and Death of Sandra Bland in 2018.