Police Brutality: Beaten, Tasered man who cried "They're gonna kill me!" dies
A man was beaten by police, hit by a stun gun and in fear for his life, according to new eyewitness accounts in the death of Calvon "Andre" Reid, who died two days after a dramatic encounter with four officers.
"He said, 'They're gonna kill me! They're gonna kill me!'" recalled Wendy Ritter, a witness to Reid's early morning clash with police in the Wynmoor Village retirement community. "In my wildest imagination I didn't believe he would die."
Ritter told the Sun Sentinel she's not comfortable speaking to police about what she saw and has an interview pending with a prosecutor from the State Attorney's Office.
Four Coconut Creek officers are being investigated for their role in Reid's death on Feb. 24, two days after he was stunned — his father said three times — with a 50,000-volt Taser.
Police said Reid appeared inside the gated community around 1 a.m. with cuts all over his body. Police said paramedics couldn't treat him because he was "aggressive," so they called police. When he refused to comply with officers' demands, they stunned him with Tasers, officials said.
Ritter said she was home with her boyfriend, Marc Lamorte, that night. She was in the bathroom, he was in the kitchen. He ran out calling: "Somebody's being beaten," she recounted
"It was screaming, screaming like somebody was being beat," Lamorte said.
Ritter said they went outside and an officer asked if she knew Reid. Ritter said Reid was on his stomach on the ground, hands shackled behind his back. He looked at her and twice said, "They're gonna kill me!"
She and her boyfriend were ordered away. After they got upstairs, Lamorte again looked out on the walkway. "One of the cops says something to him and socks him," he said. "He hit him. Just bam. This guy was no threat to anybody, he was on the ground. He was tied. There's something wrong here."
After that, "It got very quiet," Ritter said.
http://touch.sun-sentinel.com/#section/1107/article/p2p-83091414/
