Family says five Oklahoma police beat father to death after asking for ID

Three Oklahoma police officers were placed on administrative leave Saturday after a man whose ID they requested arrived dead and disfigured at a nearby hospital.

The Moore, Oklahoma officers detained Luis Rodriguez after he tried to chase after his wife following a fight she had with their daughter outside a movie theater. His wife, Nair, told local station News 9 that she'd slapped her daughter after a fight and that Luis was simply trying to keep her from driving away upset. That's when officers asked her husband for ID.

According to Nair and their daughter, Lunahi, Luis tried to bypass several officers to prevent Nair from leaving the scene. He was then taken to the ground, they said. Then, they claim, the situation turned grave and five of them beat Luis to death.

"When they flipped him over you could see all the blood on his face, it was... he was disfigured, you couldn't recognize him," Lunahi told the station. "My mom was taking a video and asking, ‘What are they doing this for? Why?' And they didn't give really an explanation."

"I saw him," Luis' wife, Nair, told News 9. "His body when [they carried] it to the stretcher. I knew that he was dead."

Nair told the station Luis was trying to defuse the fight, and that she'd given the same account to the police.

"I told them I hit her and he was just trying to reach me," she said. "Why didn't they arrest me?"

Police reportedly seized Nair's phone, but another family member kept an audio recording.

According to NewsOk, the officers were two on-duty Moore police, one off-duty officer and two off-duty game wardens. “They jumped on him like he was some kind of killer or drug dealer and beat him up,” Lunahi  told NewsOk. “He never fought the officers, they beat him on the head and that's how he lost his breath.”

Rodriguez's body was taken to the state medical examiner for an autopsy.

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[Photo credit: Screenshot, News9]