Police pinned Black man with knee on his back for 86 seconds before his death: report

New, disturbing details have emerged about an incident that got a Kansas sheriff's deputy charged with second-degree murder for the death of a Black man in custody, reported The Guardian on Friday — with the death bearing a striking resemblance to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis five years ago.

According to the report, "Richard Fatherly was charged last month with second-degree murder and an alternative count of involuntary manslaughter in Charles Adair’s 5 July death in the Wyandotte county detention center in Kansas City, Kansas. Adair had been arrested one day before his death on misdemeanor warrants for failure to appear on multiple traffic violations."

According to civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Adair's family, the newly revealed records show that "Charles Adair was handcuffed, lying on his stomach with a severely injured leg, and posed no threat when a deputy pressed a knee into his back, resulting in his death."

Adair was held in that position for one minute and 26 seconds, immediately after being wheeled from the infirmary to his cell.

"At the time, Adair’s leg needed to be amputated and was so badly infected that he was taken straight to the hospital, a Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent wrote in the affidavit," said the report. "Before Adair was cleared to return to the jail, he was diagnosed with a type of bone infection that sometimes develops in people with diabetes. A medical screening also found he was schizophrenic, the affidavit said."

The report says Adair, who was handcuffed, threw himself out of his wheelchair and was incoherent after being put back in his cell, after which Fatherly pinned him to the ground with his knee as Adair screamed for help. "You're done," Fatherly told him, per the affidavit, as Adair stopped resisting and said, "Ok." A medical report found the cause of death to be homicide from "mechanical asphyxia."

Fatherly's attorney has called the death an accident and denies his client was responsible.

The murder of George Floyd at the hands of former police officer Derek Chauvin, which was in very similar circumstances as this alleged incident, prompted furious protests all over the country and prompted at least 30 states and Washington, D.C. to pass policing reforms.