Witnesses have told Mississippi state investigators that an unarmed black man died after being kept in a chokehold by a police officer for more than 20 minutes and denied CPR, according to his family’s attorneys, who said an autopsy confirmed he was fatally strangled.

Mississippi police accused of choking unarmed man to death with flashlight Read more

State medical examiners provisionally found Jonathan Sanders died through homicide by manual asphyxiation, according to attorneys Chokwe Lumumba and CJ Lawrence.

Sanders, who was 39, repeatedly told Stonewall police officer Kevin Herrington “I can’t breathe”, according to one witness.

According to the attorneys, one witness alleged that Herrington said he was “going to get that nigger” seconds before confronting Sanders in Stonewall on the night of 8 July, and several said the officer was the aggressor. Police have described the encounter as “a fight”.

“We believe there is probable cause for a prosecution,” the attorney Lawrence said in an interview on Wednesday. “A determination should now be made by a jury at an open trial as to whether officer Herrington had any justification for choking Jonathan Sanders to death.”

The attorneys are requesting that a special prosecutor take over the case, citing remarks at a town hall meeting on Tuesday by Clarke County’s district attorney, Bilbo Mitchell, that he had handled 15 cases of killings by police during his career and none had resulted in an officer being indicted.

Warren Strain, a spokesman for the Mississippi department of public safety, did not respond to a request to confirm the preliminary conclusions of the medical examiner’s autopsy. Stonewall police chief Michael Street did not respond to a message requesting comment.

Sanders’ attorneys said they were present this week while three witnesses, whom they declined to identify due to safety concerns, separately gave matching accounts of what happened to investigators from the Mississippi bureau of investigation (MBI) during filmed interviews.

According to the attorneys, the three witnesses are related to Sanders by marriage and one has 10 years of experience working in law enforcement. They said this witness told Herrington he was trained in CPR and had his own mask for use on a patient but was repeatedly prevented by the officer from using it on Sanders.

The version of events given by witnesses, they said, is that Sanders was riding by a gas station on a horse-drawn buggy at about 10.30pm when he made a comment to Herrington, who had pulled over a driver. The attorneys said this driver had told them he was drunk and his registration tags had expired.

The driver said his stop was abandoned when Sanders asked Herrington “Why don’t you leave that man alone?” or similar, said Lumumba. “According to the driver, once the officer saw Jonathan, his attention was piqued and he said: ‘I’m going to get that nigger.’”

The attorneys said investigators from the MBI had informed them they were aware of the alleged racist remark and were in communication with the driver.

Lumumba said a person they call Witness 1 was standing at the window of a nearby home seeking signal for a cellphone when he or she saw Sanders approaching on his buggy, wearing a light on a headband similar to those used by climbers.

“Then, Witness 1 saw officer Herrington’s blue lights come on,” said Lumumba. “Jonathan’s horse reared up, startled, and knocked Jonathan off his horse. His light slipped around his neck. Jonathan ran to get the horse and Officer Herrington came from behind him, yanked him down to the ground in front of the house with the light strap and placed him in a chokehold. Jonathan didn’t even see him.”



Early reports said witnesses had thought Sanders was choked with some kind of flashlight, which attorneys now believe was a reference to the head-mounted light.

“I never saw him go for the officer,” said Witness 1, who was quickly joined by Witnesses 2 and 3, according to the attorneys. They said Herrington held Sanders face-down on the ground and placed his arms around Sanders’ neck to restrain him.

Witness 3, who the attorneys said has law enforcement experience, told investigators he ran outside to see what was going on and told Herrington: “‘Let him up; he won’t be able to breathe in my grass because my grass is too high,’” said Lumumba. Witness 2, who had also moved outside, said he or she then heard Sanders twice say “I can’t breathe”.



The witnesses said Herrington was shouting to them that Sanders was reaching for his gun, despite the 39-year-old being unable to reach the weapon. The officer initially asked Witness 3 to help remove the gun from his belt, before changing his mind and asking for a woman who had been travelling with him in his patrol car to come out and remove the gun with Witness 3’s guidance.



“The chokehold had been going on the entire time,” said Lumumba, who noted that Eric Garner died in about three minutes when placed in a chokehold by a police officer in New York City last year, prompting months of protests.



“Witness 3 was saying ‘Let him up, let him up, he’s not breathing, let me do CPR’,” said Lumumba. “He is trained in CPR and had a mask in his home. But Herrington said ‘No, stand back’.”



The witnesses said that after being instructed by the officer, Herrington’s companion attempted to call for backup but could not operate his radio system, according to the attorneys. Witness 3 again stepped in to help, and officers were dispatched, but they travelled to the wrong location and had to be redirected.



“This time frame, according to Witness 3, is that Jonathan was in a chokehold for more than 20 minutes, close to 30 minutes,” said Lumumba, who said that when a support officer identified as “Officer Derek” arrived, Herrington told his colleague: “I think I put him to sleep.”



Medics were called and used Witness 3’s mask, according to Lumumba, but they did not appear to competently administer CPR. After they sat Sanders upright, “blood starts rushing out of his mouth, and they are never able to get a pulse”, said the attorney. Sanders was put in an ambulance and taken to hospital, although the family’s attorneys say he was dead at the scene.

