Tyre Nichols: Black man Tyre Nichols screamed for his mother as police officers struck him repeatedly even though his hands were restrained. A video released by the city of the fatal beating of the black man in Memphis shows Nichols on the ground, plaintively calling out three times: “Mom!” towards the end. He died in hospital three days later on January 10.
There are four videos in total. The longest one is from an overhead camera on a power pole and lasts 31 minutes with no sound. Two minutes in the video, police officers are seen pinning Nichols on the ground. As one kneels on his torso, another officer kicks him repeatedly.
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Nicholas brutally beaten
Officers aim several kicks at Nichols’ face. They make him stand, prop him up while pounding him with their fists until he falls and then they they aim two more kicks at his face.
He lies face down on the ground. An officer pulls him over to a cruiser and puts him in a sitting position.
Minutes pass with Nichols in clear agony. At least six officers mill about. One shines a flashlight on Nichols although the scene is fairly well illuminated by street lights.
In one extended section, Nichols’ slumped body is propped sitting on the ground against a police car, his head lolling onto his chest and legs in front of him. His upper half repeatedly collapses to the ground — only to be propped up again by the police in attendance.
More officers show up. They circle the scene till the emergency medical technicians to show up.
More videos emerge
The other three videos released by the Memphis Police Department are all from officers’ chest cameras and offer different perspectives. In one, officers catch Nichols after a foot chase. Several officers are exhausted.
Nichols is pinned on the ground. “I didn’t do anything,” Nichols gasps. “You don’t do that, okay?”
“Get on the ground!” one officer commands.
Cops fire Taser
In another dramatic video, officers have fired a Taser at Nichols but he has run away. Police catch up with him, yelling expletives. One officer pepper sprays Nichols, subduing him.
A fourth video contains scenes of officers who remained behind after Nichols’ escape.
One officer speaks by radio to a police dispatcher: “Young black male, slim build, blue jeans and a hoodie.”
Officers give each other water from a water bottle. One is bent over in exhaustion, hands on his knees. Another appears to reel the wire from the Taser fired at Nichols back on to its spool.
“I got to find my glasses,” an officer says, breathing heavily. The footage later shows him picking up his glasses from the roadway where they’d fallen.
Mother calls out officers
Nicholas’ mother RowVaughn Wells addressed an emotional press conference on Friday and called out the officers for beating her son “to a pulp.” She told them: “You disgraced your own families when you did this.”
President Joe Biden called for protests against the incident to remain peaceful. He spoke with Wells Friday to offer his condolences and commended “the family’s courage and strength.”
The man’s mother was “obviously in enormous pain,” Biden said, adding that she had “made a very strong plea” for peaceful protests.
The father of a four-year-old son, Nichols worked for FedEx, loved skateboarding and taking photos, and had a tattoo of his mother’s name on his arm.
“My heart just breaks,” Wells told the news conference. “For a mother to know that their child was calling them in their need, and I wasn’t there for him.”
“My son was a beautiful soul,” Wells said. “He was a good boy. No one’s perfect. But he was damn near it.”
Wells accused police of initially trying to cover up her son’s beating, coming to her door to say he had been arrested for drunk driving and pepper-sprayed and tasered after being difficult to handcuff.
Rodney King beating
Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis compared the video to footage of the 1991 Rodney King beating, which sparked days of riots in Los Angeles that left dozens dead.
“I was in law enforcement during the Rodney King incident, it’s very much aligned with that same type of behavior,” Davis said. “I would say it’s about the same, if not worse.”
In May 2020, another Black George Floyd died when a white police officer suffocated him by kneeling on his neck. The brutality in Minneapolis was caught on film and sparked massive violent protests nationwide. Police officer Derek Chauvin was consequently convicted of murder.
The officers involved in Nichols’s fatal beating were themselves Black. They were taken into custody. They faced second-degree murder charges and also aggravated assault and aggravated kidnapping.
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