The man struggled on the ground, and multiple policemen pinned him down (screenshot of NBC video)
According to a report by the Associated Press on March 21, earlier this month, an African-American man in Virginia, USA, died after being kneeled down by multiple police officers. Surveillance videos released on the 21st showed that the man was abused for up to 20 minutes. The man’s family has filed second-degree murder charges against the officers involved.
The African-American man was a detainee with a mental illness. During the check-in process of the mental hospital, 7 policemen and 3 hospital staff forcibly took him into a room. Surveillance footage shows the man being pinned to a chair at first before falling, writhing on the floor. He was then restrained by an increasing number of police and hospital staff, putting pressure on him “from braid to toe”. The man struggled at first but stopped moving after being abused for about 20 minutes.
The man ended up motionless (screenshot of NBC video)
The final autopsy results have not yet been released, but prosecutors in the case have repeatedly said the victim’s cause of death was asphyxiation. “Obviously he shouldn’t have been strangled to death, but it happened,” he said.
The victim’s family issued a strong protest (screenshot of NBC video)
The African-American man’s family said he was brutally mistreated both in the hospital and in law enforcement custody days earlier. “My son was treated like a dog, worse than a dog,” the man’s mother complained.