MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Prosecutors in Milwaukee have charged four hotel workers in connection with D’Vontaye Mitchell’s death after scouring video showing them piling on top of the Black man during an incident that Mitchell’s family says is disturbingly similar to George Floyd’s death.
Mitchell’s family spent weeks pressuring prosecutors to charge the hotel workers in the June 30 death. District Attorney John Chisholm finally filed a count of being a party to felony murder against each of them on Tuesday.
Here’s what to know about Mitchell’s death and the Hyatt workers, who now face sentences of up to nearly 16 years in prison if they’re convicted.
How did the conflict start?
The criminal complaint charging the hotel workers offers a detailed account of the last moments of Mitchell’s life based on Hyatt surveillance footage, witness accounts and a bystander’s video.
Surveillance video shows Mitchell running through the downtown high-rise hotel’s lobby on the afternoon of June 30, according to the complaint. He enters the gift shop and then the women’s bathroom.
Two women who were in the bathroom later told investigators that Mitchell tried to lock them in the bathroom. One woman said she told him to let her out but he refused. She was eventually able to push past him.
Video shows off-duty Hyatt security guard Brandon Turner dragging Mitchell out of the bathroom. He and a hotel guest then get into a scuffle with Mitchell and drag him across the lobby, through the foyer and out into the hotel driveway. At one point Turner punches Mitchell six times.
Once outside, the hotel guest returns to the building but on-duty security guard Todd Erickson, bellhop Herbert Williamson and front desk worker Devin Johnson-Carson help Turner hold Mitchell down on his stomach for what the complaint says was eight to nine minutes.
Johnson-Carson would later tell detectives he heard Mitchell groaning and saying “stop” and “why?” and something about breathing. Erickson told Mitchell that “I don’t want to hear that,” followed by a profanity. Johnson-Carson also said Erickson struck Mitchell with a baton.
Williamson told investigators he put his knee on the middle of Mitchell’s back, adding that Mitchell was strong, wouldn’t calm down and tried to bite Erickson. Mitchell kept asking what he did wrong, Williamson said.
A bystander’s video of the incident caught Mitchell yelling “please” and “I’m sorry” while breathing heavily. Erickson turns to the camera and says: “This is what happens when you go into the ladies’ room.”
By the time police and emergency responders arrived Mitchell had stopped moving, the complaint said.
How did Mitchell die?
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that Mitchell was morbidly obese and suffered from heart disease, according to the complaint, and had cocaine and methamphetamine in his system.
After watching video of the incident, Assistant Medical Examiner Lauren Decker determined that Mitchell suffered “restraint asphyxia” from the workers holding down his legs, arms, back and head. In other words, they prevented Mitchell from breathing.
Decker said Mitchell might have lived had the workers moved him to his side. The medical examiner’s office classified the manner of death as homicide on Friday.
What happened next?
Mitchell’s family began drawing comparisons of his death to Floyd, who died in 2020 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes. The death of Floyd, who was Black, sparked a national reckoning on race relations.
Mitchell’s family began pressuring Chisholm to file charges against the Hyatt employees. The Rev. Al Sharpton, a longtime civil rights activist, delivered the elegy at Mitchell’s funeral. The family hired Ben Crump, a noted civil rights attorney who represented Floyd’s family.
“Everybody in America, after George Floyd, should have trained their employees, especially security personnel, to not put knees on peoples’ backs and peoples’ necks,” Crump told reporters in July.
What do the charges mean?
Chisholm’s office said it was reviewing the case as a homicide but was waiting for full autopsy results. The criminal complaint concludes with a rare explanation of prosecutors’ rationale for the charges, saying that the four employees’ impaired Mitchell’s breathing due to his weight and drug consumption and they knew it.
“The actions and words of DM, the distress that he was in, show that all four Defendants were aware that holding DM face first on the ground was ‘practically certain’ to cause ‘impairment of his physical condition,’” the complaint says.
The charge brought against the hotel workers alleges they killed Mitchell while committing another crime — in this case, battery. They weren’t charged with Wisconsin’s most serious offense, first-degree intentional homicide, which carries a mandatory life sentence.
What are the hotel employees saying?
They maintain they didn’t intentionally kill Mitchell.
Williamson, the bellhop, told WTMJ-TV on Tuesday after the charges were filed that hotel management told him to hold Mitchell down. He didn’t tell the station who told him that but said he never committed any acts of violence against Mitchell.
“If I’m wrong for that, I mean, may God treat me in the proper way that I should be treated,” he said.
Erickson’s attorney, Michael Steinle, didn’t return messages from The Associated Press seeking comment. Erickson told investigators, however, that he knows about pressure points in the human body and couldn’t remember ever striking Mitchell, even though he was very strong, kept resisting and tried to bite him, the complaint said. Erickson insisted he didn’t do anything to intentionally hurt or kill Mitchell.
According to the complaint, Turner told a detective he heard women screaming in the hotel bathroom and Mitchell was trying to lock himself inside. He said Mitchell tried to reach into his pockets, called him names and swung at him first. He acknowledged punching Mitchell several times. He said he thought Mitchell was on drugs and at one point moved Mitchell’s clothes off his face.
Johnson-Carson told a detective that he saw Turner fighting with Mitchell and Mitchell didn’t appear to be stable mentally because he was speaking “gibberish,” the complaint said. He decided to help Turner because elderly people and children were in the lobby, the on-duty staff were mostly women and Turner was smaller than Mitchell, he said.
Erickson told everyone to turn Mitchell onto his stomach and he thought Erickson was going to handcuff him, Johnson-Carson said. He didn’t see anyone strangle Mitchell and none of them thought Mitchell had stopped breathing. At one point he said he told Williamson to stop applying pressure, and Williamson finally got up.
Online court records listed Turner’s attorney as Matt Last, who didn’t immediately return an AP message seeking comment. Williamson and Johnson-Carson’s dockets didn’t list any attorneys and the AP was not able to find phone listings for them.
What’s next?
Arrests warrants have been issued for all four defendants. As of Wednesday, Erickson was in custody but there was no record the others had been arrested yet.
Once they are in custody, they will have to make brief initial appearances in court. Erickson made his Wednesday morning.
Preliminary hearings will follow before a judge decides whether there’s enough evidence for them to stand trial.