HENRICO Security camera video from a state psychiatric hospital in Virginiaus USrecorded the death of a handcuffed black man, identified as Irvo Otienoafter police and medical staff held him to the ground for about 11 minutes on March 6.
The March 6 death of Irvo Otieno in Virginia reignited debate over how US law enforcement treats people with mental illness.
The recording shows at least seven Henrico County police officers entering a room at Central State Hospital in Dinwiddie County, dragging the handcuffed Otieno with them. The agents lean him against a small chair and then when he seems to move, they surround him and force him to the ground where they pin him to death.
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Seven mostly black police officers from Henrico County and three police officers from the Central State Hospital in Petersburg were charged with murder last week. Dinwiddie County Prosecutor Ann Cabell Baskervill alleges the youth “died of asphyxia” while being “physically restrained.”
ATTENTION FOR STRONG PICTURES
Dinwiddie County Attorney’s Office/via Portal
Medical workers cover the body of Irvo Otieno with a sheet after the man was suffocated at a Virginia hospital. Photo: Dinwiddie County Attorney’s Office/via Portal
Baskervill said it would release the video publicly on Tuesday, although some defense attorneys have filed motions asking a judge to block the release.
Otieno, who was struggling with mental health issues and was evacuated from his home three days earlier, was taken to Central State Hospital by county jail officials earlier in the day. In the video, people who appear to be part of the medical team can be seen entering and exiting the room while the officers are Otieno, aged 28, holding his legs and arms and cradling his body with their knees.
His family said that while in prison, Otieno was withheld the necessary medication for his mental illness, which was not disclosed. They denied initial police reports that he was violent at the first hospital he was taken to.
“All of my son’s systems have failed,” his mother Caroline Ouko said in an interview on Monday, listing the institutions tasked with protecting his wellbeing during those three days, including the police, hospitals and the judicial system. . “They set a trap for him.”
When the episode started three days earlier, Ouko said, Otieno appeared to be having a nervous breakdown. He walked onto a neighbor’s lawn and grabbed some solar powered lamps that were installed on the property and knocked on the neighbor’s front door before his mother rescued him.
Assigned/via AP
The picture shows Irvo Otieno, a black man who died after being immobilized by police in the United States. Otieno suffered from mental health issues Photo: Ceded/via AP
A neighbor called the Henrico police to report a burglary. Responding officers placed Otieno under an emergency detention order and took him to a hospital “for further evaluation,” police said in a statement.
At that hospital, police said, Otieno was “physically aggressive” toward officers who arrested him, took him to the Henrico County Jail, and charged three counts of assaulting a police officer and one count of hospital disorderly conduct and vandalism.
Otieno was held in jail over the weekend and then rushed to the state hospital on March 6. In court on March 15, Baskervill said Otieno suffocated under the weight of agents at the state hospital and that he was “not agitated and combative.”
The seven agents have been placed on administrative leave. Sheriff Alisa Gregory said last week that the events of March 6 “represent a tragedy in that Mr. Otieno’s life was lost.” /NYT, AFP