In an extensive interview with "CNN This Morning" co-host Don Lemon, the stepfather of Tyre Nichols explained what he saw in the videos taken of the beating in Memphis earlier this week of the 29 year old Black man that led to five police officers being indicted for murder.
With Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis earlier calling what she saw in the videos as bad or worse than what happened to Rodney King in 1991, Rodney Wells detailed the abuse his stepson endured after reportedly being pulled over for reckless driving.
Sitting next to his wife, Wells stated he didn't want her to see it, but added, "I knew that's what he said, he said, 'What did I do? Why are y'all doing this to me? What did I do?' And they proceeded to snatch him out of the car and was trying to wrestle him to the ground and he got scared."
"So he was athletic enough to get out of their situation and run and he was trying to run home, because he was three blocks from the house when they stopped him," he recalled. "So after the initial encounter -- we didn't see everything, because actually when the body cam started, they were already engaged and then there was the second body cam with the sky cam that got the encounter. When I saw the police officer, you know, they have this little like stick, this metal thing that they pull out..."
"Like an antenna, retractable," Lemon prompted.
"I saw them pull that out and started beating my son with it. And I saw officers hitting on him, I saw officers kicking him," he continued. "One officer kicked him like he was kicking a football a couple of times. But the most telling thing about the video to me was the fact that it was maybe ten officers on the scene and nobody tried to stop it or even after they beat him and they propped him up against the car, no one rendered aid to him whatsoever."
"They walked around, smoking cigarettes like it was all calm and like, you know, bragging about what happened," he added.
"An hour of video and you saw him just sitting there?" Lemon asked.
"He was sitting there, and then he slumped over and an officer walked over to him and said, sit back up! mother -- MF you know, while he's handcuffed," he confirmed. "So he had to -- they prop him back up, and he slumped over again, and they prop him back up again, but no one was rendering aid. I saw some fire department people come out there and they just walked around and nobody showed him any aid, and they're supposed to be trained in first aid. By the time the paramedic truck pulled up, that's when we couldn't see anything because the paramedic truck blocked the camera. So I was told that the lady who was driving the paramedic truck never got out."
CNN 01 27 2023 08 20 12 youtu.be
