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On the night of 1/7/23, Tyre Nichols, 29, a FedEx employee, was stopped by the police in Hickory Hill, a mostly Black neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee, the reported motive being reckless driving.
Mr Nichols was brutally beaten and died three days later at a hospital.
Yesterday, the authorities released the video they put together, a composite from body cameras worn by officers and from another camera affixed to a nearby light pole.
From the very start, the officer going up to Mr Nichols to pull him out of his vehicle shows a disregard for decency, his manner being overly aggressive.
Mr Nichols is pushed to the ground and the beating starts.
I heard Mr Nichols’ voice pleading, ‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ to which there was no verbal reply from the officers — five in total — just more beatings instead.
I tried to imagine myself in the victim’s place and thought I would’ve lain very still in the hope the beatings stopped. But it wasn’t me getting punched repeatedly. It wasn’t me in despair and fearing I’d be killed.
Then Mr Nichols gets up and starts running off. The officers jump in their patrol cars and catch him a distance away. Then the beating intensifies.
I thought he shouldn’t have run but stayed put.
But it wasn’t me getting punched again and again.
I wanted to scream STOP! PLEASE! TALK TO THE MAN! LISTEN!
Turns out Mr Nichols had been running in the direction of his mother’s home who lives nearby. He wanted her help. At one…
