By Daniel Trotta
(Reuters) – An autopsy showed Tire Nichols had a legal amount of alcohol and a trace amount of marijuana in his blood when Memphis police beat the Black man to death following a traffic stop in January, ABC News reported on Wednesday, undermining police claims that Nichols was High.
Nichols’ death sparked widespread outrage after police video showed officers beating and kicking Nichols, 29, as he cried for his mother near his family’s home in Tennessee. Five police officers, all Black, were charged with second-degree murder.
The autopsy also found that Nichols “died of blunt force trauma and the manner of death was homicide,” according to a statement from the Nichols family’s attorneys, Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, sent to Reuters.
The Shelby County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the five police officers, shared the report with the family before it became public, ABC said, citing one of the network’s reporters who was in the room with the family at the time. time.
Nichols’ blood alcohol level was .049%, well below the .08% legal limit in Tennessee, and he had trace amounts of marijuana in his system, ABC reported.
Police body camera video of the events following the beating captured officers claiming Nichols was high and expressing disbelief when no contraband was found in his car.
The video shows that the first emergency medical technician to treat Nichols first asked him, “What’s wrong with you? We’re trying to get you right. What’s wrong with you?”
At the time Nichols was fatally wounded, sitting in a patrol car with his hands clasped behind his back. His answer was incomprehensible. He died in hospital three days later.
Crump and Romanucci are representing Nichols’ family in a $550 million federal lawsuit against the city of Memphis.
The official report is “highly consistent with our own reporting back in January of this year. We know now what we knew then,” the lawyer’s statement, referring to the independent medical examiner’s autopsy conducted in January.
“The official autopsy report further drives our commitment to seek justice for this senseless tragedy,” the statement said.
The Shelby County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Shelby County Medical Examiner told reporters that the autopsy report is available upon request through US Mail and will be sent without any notice.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; additional reporting by Tyler Clifford; Editing by Donna Bryson and Leslie Adler)
