A handcuffed black man, Frank Tyson, has died after policemen knelt on his back during an arrest.
The case is reminiscent of the murder of George Floyd when police officers knelt on his neck in 2020. In this new case, the victim can also be heard on bodycam tape telling the cops he could not breathe.
Tyson, an Ohio man, was handcuffed and left facedown on the floor of a social club on April 18, 2024.
He died in police custody and the officers involved have been placed on paid administrative leave.
Police body-camera footage released Wednesday, April 24, shows a Canton police officer responding to a report of a crash and finding Frank Tyson, a 53-year-old East Canton resident, by the bar in a nearby AMVETS post.
The crash at about 8 p.m. on April 18 had severed a utility pole.
Officer Beau Schoenegge’s body-camera footage shows that after a passing motorist directed police to the bar, a woman opened the door and said: “Please get him out of here, now.”
Police grabbed Tyson and he resisted being handcuffed and said repeatedly, “They’re trying to kill me” and “Call the sheriff,” as he was taken to the floor.
They restrained him, including with a knee on his back, and he immediately told officers he could not breathe.
Officers told Tyson he was fine. They urged him to calm down and to stop fighting as he was facedown with his legs crossed on the carpeted floor.
Police were joking with bystanders and searching through Tyson’s wallet before realizing he was in a medical crisis.
Five minutes after the body-camera footage recorded Tyson saying “I can’t breathe,” one officer asked another if Tyson had calmed down.
The other replied, “He might be out.”
Tyson did not move when an officer told him to stand and tried to roll him over. They shook him and checked for a pulse. Minutes later, an officer said medics needed to “step it up” because Tyson was not responding and the officer was unsure if he could feel a pulse. Officers then began CPR.
The Canton police report about Tyson’s death that was issued Friday, April 26, said that “shortly after securing him,” officers “recognized that Tyson had become unresponsive” and that CPR was performed.
Doses of Narcan were also administered before medics arrived.
Tyson was pronounced dead at a hospital less than an hour later.
Tyson telling officers he was unable to breathe echoes the events preceding the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020.
Tyson was black, according to the coroner’s office. The race of the police officers has not been confirmed.
Chief investigator Harry Campbell with the Stark County Coroner’s Office said Thursday, April 25, an autopsy was conducted earlier in the week and Tyson’s remains were released to a funeral home.
His niece, Jasmine Tyson, called the video “nonsense” in an interview with WEWS-TV in Cleveland.
“It just seemed like forever that they finally checked him,” Jasmine Tyson said.
Frank Tyson was released from state prison on April 6 after serving 24 years on a kidnapping and theft case and was almost immediately declared a post-release control supervision violator for failing to report to a parole officer, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Two Canton traffic bureau officers, Schoenegge and Camden Burch, were put on paid administrative leave as the Ohio Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation looks into the matter.
In a statement Thursday, April 25, the Bureau of Criminal Investigation said its probe will not determine if force was justified and that the prosecuting attorney or a grand jury will decide if charges related to the use of force are warranted.
In a statement released Wednesday, April 24, Canton Mayor William V. Sherer II said he expressed his condolences to Frank Tyson’s family in person.
“As we make it through this challenging time, my goal is to be as transparent with the community as possible,” Sherer said.
The U.S. Department of Justice has warned police officers since the mid-1990s to roll suspects off their stomachs as soon as they are handcuffed because of the danger of positional asphyxia. Many policing experts agree that someone can stop breathing if pinned on their chest for too long or with too much weight because it can compress the lungs and put stress on the heart.
Watch the video of Tyson’s last moments here.
