In 2009, Landau was driving with a friend in Denver when he was pulled over by police for an illegal left turn. Soon enough, Landau says, he was on the floor being beaten unconscious by police. "I remember grasping for air and spitting and blood flying across the grass," he said when interviewed by NPR last year about the encounter. "I remember an officer saying, 'If he doesn’t calm down we're going to have to shoot him.'"

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The city of Denver paid Landau about $800,000 in a settlement over the matter, though a investigation cleared the police officers involved, who said that Landau reached for an officer's gun. (Two of the three officers involved were later fired for reasons related to other cases involving violent clashes, though one was later reinstated.)

The nation has been galvanized in recent years by violent and sometimes fatal encounters between police and unarmed black men. For the most part, we have been left to decipher those moments through contested accounts of what happened, though there have been exceptions, such as the videotaped death of Eric Garner of Staten Island.

A new animation from StoryCorps, the storytelling series whose work can be heard on NPR, has produced a compelling look at how the violent encounter in 2009 was experienced by Landau and his mother. With audio from the NPR interview, the animation provides an illustration of their memory of that moment and their reflections of what it means about race in America. It is far from the final word on what happened, but it provides a new perspective on how to think about at least one of the nation's violent police encounters.

"My whole worldview changed that night," said Hathaway.