Tapped items and killed characters

[Darksatin]

Balin is wearing a Shield of Iron-bound Ash.
He taps himself and taps the Shield against the strike of a Cave-worm.
But Balin fails and dies.
The Shield of Iron-bound Ash can be given to an unwounded character of the same company.
But the Shield is still tapped or not ?

[Konrad Klar]

Shield of Iron-bound Ash did not leave play, so why it would be treated differently than other transferred item? And why during transfer an item would tap/untap?


P.S.
Strictly a character does not tap against strike. Untapped character may take -3 to prowess to do not tap automatically after facing a strike.
Tapping while/before facing a strike would result in -1 to prowess.

Annotation 18: When a defending player chooses to resolve a strike against a
particular character, the only actions that may be taken by either player until the strike
dice-roll is made are the following: playing hazard cards that affect the strike, the
attacker may decide to use any or all of his remaining -1 modifications due to strikes
in excess of the company's size, a target untapped character may take a -3
modification so that he will not automatically tap, and the defending character may
play resource cards that affect the strike. An action that has the condition that a target
character tap, but which otherwise has an effect not outlined here, may not be
declared at this point.
This is true even if the recipient of the strike would be the target character tapping and
thus receive -1 to his prowess.

"Tapping to/against strike" is common oversimplification. ICE was using it too.
My recent finding:

Playable on a moving company facing a non-unique hazard creature if Gates of Morning is in play. All attacks of the creature are canceled and all attacks of the next non-unique hazard creature the company faces this turn are also canceled. An untapped character in the company must tap to face any strike from a subsequent hazard creature attack for the rest of the turn. The company can do nothing during its site phase unless it contains a Wizard or you discard Eagle-mounts from your hand. Cannot be duplicated on a given turn.

All underlines mine.