Prosecutors plan subsequent week to launch the video that led authorities in Virginia to cost seven deputies and three state psychological hospital staff with second-degree homicide within the dying of a handcuffed and shackled man.
The household of Irvo Otieno noticed the video of his dying Thursday. With their blessing, the footage might be launched to the general public within the subsequent a number of days, Dinwiddie County Commonwealth’s Lawyer Ann Cabell Baskervill instructed the Richmond Instances-Dispatch.
Attorneys for the household described the video to reporters as 12 agonizing minutes of deputies pushing down and smothering Otineo, a Black man whose legs and arms had been restrained.
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“You may see that they’re placing their again into it. Each a part of his physique is being pushed down with absolute brutality,” household lawyer Mark Krudys mentioned.
Prosecutors mentioned Otieno, 28, didn’t seem like combative and was sitting in a chair when he was pulled down by officers.
Caroline Ouko, mom of Irvo Otieno, holds a portrait of her son with lawyer Ben Crump, left, her older son, Leon Ochieng and lawyer Mark Krudys on the Dinwiddie Courthouse in Dinwiddie, Virginia, on March 16, 2023. (Daniel Sangjib Min/Richmond Instances-Dispatch by way of AP)
The 12-minute video additionally confirmed an absence of urgency to assist Otieno after the deputies decided “that he was lifeless and never respiration,” Krudys mentioned.
Ten folks thus far have been charged with second-degree homicide in Otieno’s dying — seven Henrico County Sheriff’s deputies and three folks employed by the hospital.
Attorneys for the folks arrested haven’t seen the video but.
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“They present the plaintiffs’ attorneys the video. However we’re representing these folks charged with homicide which might be locked up. It’s actually disappointing. It looks like it’s extra essential to curry public favor, to strive the case within the media, as an alternative of letting the legal justice course of work the best way it’s imagined to work,” protection lawyer Peter Baruch instructed the Richmond newspaper.
Otieno’s case marks the most recent instance of a Black man’s in-custody dying that has legislation enforcement beneath scrutiny. It follows the deadly beating of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee, earlier this 12 months and comes almost three years after the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.
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Otieno, who was a toddler when his household emigrated from Kenya and grew up in suburban Richmond, had a historical past of psychological well being struggles and was experiencing psychological misery on the time of his preliminary encounter with legislation enforcement earlier this month, his household and their attorneys mentioned.
That set off a series of occasions that led to him spending a number of days in custody earlier than authorities say he died March 6 as he was being admitted to the Central State Hospital south of Richmond.