Family and friends of Nichols gather in Memphis church to pay their final respects to Black 29-year-old father whose fatal beating by police last month transformed him into new face of US racial justice movement.
Hundreds have gathered in a Memphis city church to bid farewell to Tyre Nichols, an African American man who died after being brutally beaten by US police, with civil rights leaders Al Sharpton leading the high-profile service attended by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Speaking over a flower-bedecked casket at the Mississippi
Boulevard Christian Church, preachers on Wednesday recalled a young man who
loved photography and skateboarding, and demanded justice for
Nichols and an end to police violence against Black people.
The relatives of other Black people killed by police in
cities across the United States came to offer comfort to
Nichols’ family, including a woman from Texas whose son was
killed by a Houston police officer, who sang before a black-clad
gospel choir.
Vice President Kamala Harris flew to Memphis and embraced
Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, in the pews before addressing
the congregation.
“This is a family that lost their son and their brother
through an act of violence at the hands and the feet of people
who had been charged with keeping them safe,” Harris said.
“Tyre
Nichols should have been safe.”
Nichols died on January 10 in a hospital from wounds he
sustained three days earlier when beaten by Memphis police who
pulled him over while he was driving home, an incident that Ben
Crump, an attorney for the family, has branded a “police
lynching.”
The Memphis Police Department fired five of the officers,
who also are Black. Prosecutors charged them last week with
second-degree murder, assault, kidnapping, official misconduct
and oppression.
READ MORE:
Five US police officers sacked after death of Black man
‘Thugs’ and traitors
The civil rights leader Reverend Al Sharpton, who has often
spoken at the funerals of victims of police brutality, decried
the five officers as “thugs” and traitors to their race as he
eulogised Nichols in the city where the Reverend Martin Luther King
Jr. was assassinated in 1968.
“You didn’t get on the police department by yourself,”
Sharpton said as the congregation clapped and shouted.
“People
had to march and go to jail and some lost their lives to open
the doors for you, and how dare you act like that sacrifice was
for nothing?”
Sharpton said the officers who beat Nichols might have acted differently if there was real accountability for their actions. He also said he believes that if Nichols had been white, “you wouldn’t have beat him like that.”
Two other officers implicated in the events leading to
Nichols’ death have been relieved of duty — effectively
suspended — and are under investigation.
Two paramedics and
their on-scene supervisor were dismissed on Monday from the city
fire department, while two Shelby County sheriff’s deputies have
been suspended.
Police video of the confrontation released by the city on
Friday showed officers dousing Nichols with pepper spray and
pummeling him with punches, kicks and baton blows as he cried
out for his mother. One officer was seen firing a Taser stun gun
at Nichols when he attempted to flee.
Civil rights advocates and lawyers for Nichols’ family have
condemned the beating as the latest case of a Black person
brutalised by a racially biased law enforcement system that
disproportionately targets people of color, even when officers
involved are not white.
Among the mourners on Wednesday were relatives of Breonna
Taylor and George Floyd, two African Americans whose deaths at
the hands of police sparked protests in 2020 against racism and
police brutality.
Nichols grew up in Sacramento, California, and moved to
Memphis early in the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. He had a four-year-old son and took a daily supper break from his FedEx job
to join his stepfather and co-worker for meals at his home.
Antonio Romanucci, another lawyer for his family, has said
Nichols also was a strong supporter of the Black Lives Matter
movement, saying it was a cause for which he gave his life, “and
essentially what that makes him is a martyr.”
A montage of photos of Nichols and images from protests that followed the news of his death were shown on large screens.
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Source: TRTWorld and agencies
‘Police lynching’ victim Tyre Nichols laid to rest in Memphis city
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