New episode of shocking violence in the USA starring 3 policemen against an African American, who died after being repeatedly hit with a taser in the state of Mississippi. The episode, according to the American media, dates back to the night of last New Year’s Eve but the agents were only indicted today after the publication of the videos taken by their body cams. Former police officers Avery Willis, Kenya McCarty and James Land have been indicted by a grand jury, Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens said during a press conference with the Jackson mayor and law enforcement chief.
Of the three police officers, two were charged with second-degree murder and one with manslaughter. The man killed was named Keith Murriel, 41, who died after being shot for more than ten minutes with a stun gun. In the video taken by the body cams, the policemen can be heard laughing at the suffering of the man, one of the three, Willis, also addresses the victim with racist insults.
Cops had come across Murriel to arrest him for alleged trespassing at a hotel, after they asked him to leave the building’s parking lot. The footage shows Avery Willis, Kenya McCarty and James Land struggling to handcuff Murriel as the latter is knocked out numerous times for over 10 minutes.
In the video we see the policemen who, after handcuffing Murriel, place him horizontally on the back of a patrol car. This is for 17 minutes of the film, lasting a total of one hour. In the remaining 43 minutes, neither medics nor policemen are seen verifying if Murriel needed immediate medical assistance. The footage is split into multiple clips, and it’s unclear whether officers witnessed Murriel off-camera. What is clear is that during those 43 minutes, however, the agents joked about the meeting. “It was fun to see (his) feet in the air… It was fun at first. It got annoying after a while.”
The paramedics finally arrived about fifteen minutes after the bodycam footage ended.
