Prosecutors in ohio have announced reckless homicide charges against two police officers in the death of one man handcuffed and lying face down on the floor of a social club in Canton while telling officers he couldn’t breathe.
Stark County Prosecutor Kyle Stone told reporters Saturday that charges against Canton officers Beau Schoenegge and Camden Burch were returned by a grand jury in the April 18 death of Frank Tyson, a 53-year-old East Canton resident who died shortly after a car was taken into custody. crash that severed a utility pole.
Police body camera footage showed Tyson, who was black, resisting and repeatedly saying, “They’re trying to kill me” and “Call the sheriff” as he was placed on the ground, telling officers he wasn’t could breathe.
Officers told Tyson he was fine, to calm down and stop fighting while handcuffed face down, and officers joked with bystanders and went through Tyson’s wallet before realizing he was in a medical crisis wrong.
The county coroner’s office ruled Tyson’s death a homicide in August, also citing heart disease and cocaine and alcohol intoxication as contributing factors.
Stone said the charges were third-degree felonies, punishable by a maximum prison sentence of 36 months and a $10,000 fine. He said in response to a question on Saturday that there was no evidence to support the charges against bystanders.
The Stark County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Saturday that Schoenegge and Burch had been booked into the jail. An official said no information was available on who might represent them. Canton police previously said the two had been placed on paid administrative leave per department policy.
Tyson family attorney Bobby DiCello said in a statement that the arrests were a relief because the officers involved in what he called Tyson’s “inhumane and brutal death” will not escape prosecution. But he called it “bittersweet because it makes official what they’ve known for a long time: Frank is a murder victim.”
The president of the county’s NAACP chapter, Hector McDaniel, called the allegations “consistent with the behavior we’ve seen.”
“We believe we are moving in the right direction toward transparency, accountability and truth,” McDaniel said, according to the Canton Repository.
Tyson had been released from state prison on April 6 after serving 24 years in a kidnapping and robbery case and was almost immediately declared a post-release supervision violator for failing to report to a probation officer, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. .
