TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Eyewitness testimony Tuesday in the continuing trial three police officers, who are white and Asian American, charged with the 2020 death of Manuel Ellis, a Black man, starkly contradicted the picture the officers’ lawyers painted.
Keyon Lowery, 26, told the jury in Pierce County Superior Court that Ellis didn’t act aggressively toward the Tacoma, Washington, police officers nor did he fight back, and that he was “no threat at all, none.”
Lowery said he was in “disbelief” with how the officers acted and said he believed the officers “were in the wrong.”
Tacoma Officers Matthew Collins and Christopher Burbank, both white, are charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of Ellis on March 3, 2020. Officer Timothy Rankine, who is Asian American, is charged with manslaughter. All three have pleaded not guilty. They are free on bail and remain employed by the Tacoma Police Department on paid leave.
The Pierce County Medical Examiner ruled the March 3, 2020, death of Ellis, 33, a homicide caused by lack of oxygen during physical restraint. Ellis repeatedly told police that he couldn’t breathe while they continued to apply force. Ellis also had methamphetamine in his system, and lawyers for the officers have offered a drug overdose as an alternative theory in Ellis’ cause of death.
Ellis’ death came just weeks before George Floyd’s death under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer triggered a nationwide reckoning on race and policing.
Casey Arbenz, one of Collins’ lawyers, characterized Lowery and his former girlfriend Sara McDowell, who recorded cellphone video of the officers and Ellis, as “arguably the state’s most significant witnesses” during Tuesday’s proceedings. That’s because the witnesses say they saw how the physical confrontation between Ellis and the officers began.
How the struggle started has been a central point of the officers’ defense,…
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