Tyre Nichols’ stepfather, Rodney Wells, described the video of his son’s arrest, telling CNN that “one officer kicked him like he was kicking a football, a couple of times.”
“They have this little like stick, this metal thing that they pull out,” Wells told CNN’s Don Lemon. “They pull out — like an antenna. I saw them pull that out and started beating my son with it. And I saw officers hitting on him, I saw officers kicking him.”
Wells added that officers did not render aid to his son.
“The most telling thing about the video to me was the fact that it was maybe 10 officers on the scene and nobody tried to stop it or even after they beat him and they propped him up against the car, no one rendered aid to him whatsoever,” he said. “They walked around, smoking cigarettes like it was all calm.”
“He was sitting there, and then he slumped over. And an officer walked over to him and said, ‘sit back up mother – mf,’ you know, while he’s handcuffed. So, he had to, they prop him back up, and he slumped over again, and they prop him back up again, but no one was rendering aid,” he continued.
“I saw some fire department people come out there and they just walked around and nobody showed him any aid, and they supposed to be trained in first aid. By the time the paramedic truck pulled up, that’s when we couldn’t see anything because the paramedic truck blocked the camera,” Wells said.
The city of Memphis plans to release the video sometime after 6 p.m. local time (7 p.m. ET).
Watch here:
CNN’s Amanda Watts contributed reporting to this post.