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Police Covered Head of Black Man, Held Him to the Ground before He Stopped Breathing

Police Covered Head of Black Man, Held Him to the Ground before He Stopped Breathing
folder_openAmericas... access_time6 years ago
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By Staff, Agencies

Newly released police video of the March death of a Black man in Rochester, New York, shows officers putting a bag on his head and holding him on the ground before he stopped breathing.

Daniel Prude was having a mental health episode on March 23 when his brother Joe Prude called the Rochester Police Department for help, the family said at a press conference Wednesday. Prude stopped breathing after police knelt on him while he was handcuffed, according to video.

When he was brought to the hospital 15 minutes later, he was brain dead, Joe Prude said.

Organizers from the group Free the People Roc, a Black Lives Matter group, named three officers they say were involved in the incident.

Family members are calling on the firing and arrest of all the officers involved in Daniel Prude's death.

Disturbing bodycam footage of the incident, which was provided to CNN by attorneys for Prude, compiles multiple officers' body cameras and has been edited together to show different angles of the incident.

For the first few minutes of the approximately 11-minute encounter with police, Prude, who is handcuffed, repeats the phrase "in Jesus Christ I pray, amen." He also makes various remarks about getting his money to take a plane and asks for the officers' guns and that they stay away from him.

Video shows Prude naked in the middle of a city street at 3:16 a.m. as the footage begins.

An officer exits his patrol car, approaches Prude while asking him six times to get on the ground as the officer points a Taser at him. Prude complies and is asked to put his hands behind his back, which he quickly does. The officer then cuffs him as Prude says "yes, sir" several times.

Several other officers arrive on scene and one appears to identify Prude by name.

Three minutes after the incident begins, one officer puts a spit sock – which is designed to keep a person from spitting or biting – over Prude's head. He rolls around on the ground yelling various things.

Prude appears to try to stand at approximately 3:20 a.m., and three officers move in to restrain him and hold him to the ground. Police say Prude is spitting and appears to have vomited. Three minutes and 10 seconds after the restraint, an officer says "he started throwing up, now it looks like he doesn't even have chest compressions."

They call in the EMT to help who instructs an officer to roll Prude over and perform chest compressions, which they do.

Prude appears non-responsive and is loaded into an ambulance at 3:27 a.m., 11 minutes after the first officer arrived on scene.

The New York Times reports the autopsy report ruled prude's death a homicide, caused by "complications of asphyxia in the setting of a physical restraint."

The report further sites "excited delirium" and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or the drug PCP, were contributing factors.

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