Seven police officers and three hospital workers have been charged with murder following the March 6 death of a black inmate at a mental hospital in Virginia, the prosecutor in charge of the case said Thursday.
Irvo Otieno, 28, died ten days ago while being admitted to the Central State Hospital in Petersburg, three hours south of Washington, after being transferred from a local prison due to his mental condition.
According to initial autopsy results, he died of asphyxiation while “physically restrained,” Dinwiddie County District Attorney Ann Cabell Baskervill said in a statement.
The prosecutor has video of the tragedy, which she is reluctant to release at this time, but was shown to the young man’s family on Thursday.
“Even though my son was in the middle of a mental health crisis, what I saw was heartbreaking,” his mother, Caroline Ouko, commented during a news conference.
According to her, the video shows “seven agents on one man” and “it takes” with no one intervening. “They choked my baby,” “they treated him like a dog, worse than a dog,” she added, touched.
According to family attorney Ben Crump, the young man was handcuffed and ankle-tied and the seven police officers remained on him for 12 minutes.
The seven Henrico County sheriff’s clerks, ranging in age from 30 to 57, were taken into custody Tuesday and charged with murder.
Three hospital workers, aged between 23 and 34, were arrested and charged on Thursday for the same reason.
The case commemorates the murder of George Floyd, a black man in his 40s, who died in 2020 and was choked to death by a white Minneapolis police officer. The video of his ordeal that went around the world triggered a huge mobilization against racism and police violence.