The policemen suffocated the young man, who was also in a vulnerable state, to the point of killing him.
Photo: Daro Sulakauri / Getty Images
A grand jury issued arrest warrants for five Georgia police officers on Monday after being indicted for the death of a young Hispanic man whom they shot him more than 15 times with their stun guns and then suffocated when subjected during their arrest in 2019.
The Henry County Prosecutor’s Office, southeast of Atlanta, informed EFE that officers must turn in no later than Tuesday after the jury accused them last Friday of murder for the death of Mexican Fernando Rodríguez, 24, who was unarmed and naked at the time of his arrest.
To the five policemen, two of them from Henry and the other three from the city of Hampton and identified as Robert Butera, Quinton Phillips, Mason Lewis, Marcus Stroud y Gregory Bowlden, they were given the possibility of paying a bond of $ 100,000 each, Deputy District Attorney Megan Matteucci told EFE.
Rodriguez died asphyxiated on September 20, 2019 after the officers held him on the ground while he was “handcuffed and chained, and applied pressure to his body,” according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
The events occurred near the Atlanta Motor Speedway, where the Mexican had attended the “Imagine Concert Music Festival”, and were recorded by the body cameras of the officers who detained him.
In the half-hour video, Rodríguez can be seen walking naked down the middle of the street and the police can be heard ordering the Latino to stop.
By not responding to instructions, the officers shoot him with the “taser” gun and the young man falls to the ground, while they continue to apply electric shocks to him.
In addition to the multiple counts of murder and aggravated assault, the five officers were charged with violating their oaths as police officers for the way in which the young man was subjected to “the floor in a prone position while he was handcuffed and chained, holding him and exerting pressure on his body.”
In July of this year, the Georgia local authorities reached an agreement with the young man’s family by means of which they promised to compensate them with three million dollars.
According to Page Pate, of the law firm Pate, Johnson & Church, Rodríguez’s family members agreed to accept the out-of-court settlement to the lawsuit they filed against the city of Hampton.
According to Pate, Rodríguez posed no threat to the officers, or to anyone else, as he was unarmed, naked, and in need of medical attention., and the officers used excessive force and violated their constitutional rights when they continued to deploy their ‘taser’ weapons.
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eldiariony.com
Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.