Staten Island district attorneys scolded a key grand jury witness in the death of Eric Garner for calling the chokehold Officer Daniel Pantaleo used on Garner a chokehold, and for presuming that Garner had no pulse as he lay on the ground unconscious for several minutes, unattended to by emergency medical responders, according to a long investigative report by the New York Times.

Witness Taisha Allen, an acquaintance of Garner's, shot the video showing police, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians milling around for several minutes without providing first aid to Garner. She has previously expressed disbelief about the Richmond County grand jury's decision not to indict Pantaleo, but the grand jury records remain secret and the latest report provides new details about how she said prosecutors sought to downplay the negligence of officers and medical responders on the scene:

Several times during her testimony, which is kept secret under grand jury rules, Ms. Allen said prosecutors urged her to watch her words. When she said Mr. Garner did not appear to have a pulse, a prosecutor stepped in. "Don't say it like that," she recalled the prosecutor saying. "You're only assuming he didn't have a pulse." A prosecutor also interjected when she told jurors how Mr. Garner was taken to the ground. "I said they put him in a chokehold," Ms. Allen recalled saying. "'Well, you can't say they put him in a chokehold,'" she said a prosecutor responded.

The account is one of many jarring details included in the Times article, published 11 months after Garner's death outside a beauty supply store in Tompkinsville. Other takeaways include the following: