'I Can't Breathe': Man Dies After Minneapolis Police Officer Seen Kneeling On His Neck
The FBI is investigating a Black man’s death after bystander video recorded on Monday showed a Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee into the handcuffed man’s neck as he shouted that he couldn’t breathe.
Police did not immediately authenticate the video, but Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said Tuesday that he believed what he saw in the clip and characterised the officer’s actions as “wrong on every level.”
The bystander video, which has been widely circulated on social media, shows the officer, who appears to be white, pinning the man face-down on the street.
In the clip, the man is heard pleading with the officer.
“Please man, I can’t breathe,” he says.
The man repeats the phrase again and again: “I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe.”
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Within minutes, the man closes his eyes and stops speaking. The officer appears to keep his knee on the man’s neck, even as onlookers begin shouting for police to attend to him. A second officer is shown nearby, looking in the direction of onlookers.
“Get off of him!” one woman is heard shouting.
“Bro, he’s not fucking moving!” another bystander shouts. “Get off of his neck!”
(Note: A still image from early in the video, before the man in custody stops moving, is below.)
Officers called for an ambulance but the man died shortly after arriving at a hospital, the Minneapolis Police Department said in a press release. Police did not release the man’s identity, but said they believed he was in his 40s.
The two officers had arrived at the scene in response to a reported “forgery in progress,” the police statement said. The suspect, police said,...
