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Manuel Ellis was a 33-year-old African American man who died during an arrest on March 3, 2020, in Tacoma, Washington by the Tacoma Police Department. [2] The Pierce County Sheriff's Department initially claimed that Ellis had attacked a police car and officers, leading to the arrest. [3]
Dec 22, 2023 · A US jury has cleared three police officers of all criminal charges in the death of an unarmed black man who died in police custody in 2020. Prosecutors accused the officers of using deadly force...
Dec 22, 2023 · A jury has cleared three Washington state police officers of all criminal charges in the 2020 death of Manuel Ellis, a Black man who was shocked, beaten and restrained face down on a Tacoma sidewalk as he pleaded for breath.
- The Police Narrative
- The Witness Accounts
- ‘Can’T Breathe. Can’T Breathe’
- ‘They Watched Him Die’
- ‘How Can You Negotiate Over A Person’S Life?’
- ‘It’s Been Hell’
- ‘Saved My Soul’
- ‘He Touched People’
- Childhood Abuse
- ‘This Light Came on Him’
On March 3, 2020, Manuel walked into a south Tacoma 7-Eleven and bought a box of raspberry donuts and a bottle of water. He paid for his snacks and left the store at 11:11pm. Soon after, he was dead. A few blocks from the store, while walking east along 96th Street, Manuel encountered Tacoma police officers Christopher Burbank and Matthew Collins. ...
Prosecutors say three separate eyewitnesses, including a pizza delivery driver, and two motorists (one of whom filmed mobile phone footage of the encounter) said the unarmed Black man had interacted with Burbank and Collins for roughly 10 to 15 seconds as he passed by their squad cruiser. They described the brief exchange as “peaceful” and “respect...
Rankine later recalled how, as he applied pressure to Manuel’s back, he heard him make “really strange animal grunting noises.” Manuel again repeated that he couldn’t breathe in a “very calm normal voice,” Rankine said, according to prosecutors. “If you’re talking to me, you can breathe just fine,” Rankine told Manuel, the probable cause statement ...
Manuel died from hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, due to physical restraint, according to a Pierce County Medical Examiner’s report. A pathologist concluded the manner in which Ellis was hogtied and pinned face-down on the concrete had triggered significant respiratory distress, which had likely caused his death. The spit hood, the inside of which was c...
Manuel was killed nearly three months beforeanti-police protests swept the country following the death ofGeorge Floyd. When Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for more thannine minutes, he, too, had told officers, “I can’t breathe.” “With George [Floyd], everything was quick,” Marcia says, citing Minneapolis police offic...
In the two years since her son was killed, Marcia has been in survival mode. “I cried every day, every day for the whole first year, okay?” she explains. “It’s been hell. I miss him every freaking day. I’m healing, I’m mourning still and trying to get through this time. Life has really changed for all of us. It’s a difficult road that I’m walking r...
There is one thing, however, that has brought Marcia a semblance of peace: gardening. In particular, she has found strength and solace in restoring the neglected property where her son took his final breaths and which she has turned into a makeshift memorial. She calls it “Manny’s Garden”. “That garden right there saved my soul from going to hell b...
Manuel’s murder has taken a toll on the entire family. “We walk around feeling very empty,” 31-year-old Monét explains. “Like when you’re forgetting something and you don’t know what it is. That’s how I feel like on a day-to-day basis. And then I’m reminded quickly, like, oh, it’s because Manny’s not here, that’s what’s gone.” Manuel was a “gregari...
But Manuel also endured great trauma. His father died of stomach cancer two months after he was born. When his mother later remarried, Manuel’s stepfather physically abused him. “He never really had his biological father in his life,” Monét says. “That made him feel some type of way. He always wondered a lot, questioned a lot, because my father, wh...
In the weeks and months leading up to his deadly encounter with Tacoma police, Manuel was transforming his life, according to his family and others who knew him. In 2019, determined to get clean, he moved into God’s Hands Up, a sober-living home in south Tacoma. He moved into a shared room in the group home and quickly earned a reputation as a resp...
- Dorian Geiger
Dec 21, 2023 · A jury has reached a verdict in the trial of three officers charged in the 2020 death of Manuel "Manny" Ellis while in police custody in Tacoma, Washington.
May 27, 2021 · SEATTLE — The Washington state attorney general on Thursday charged two Tacoma police officers with murder and one with manslaughter in the death of Manuel Ellis, a Black man who died after...
Dec 22, 2023 · Three Washington state police officers charged in the 2020 fatal shooting of Manuel Ellis have been acquitted on all charges following a gruelling two-month trial in which Ellis was blamed for...
