Tyre Nichols mother fought back tears as she remembered her son at a heart wrenching press conference today. RowVaughn Wells slammed the “disgraceful” police officers who allegedly beat her son to death during a traffic stop.
“My son is looking down smiling, he always said he was gonna be famous one day. I never knew this is what he meant,” Ms Wells said through tears.
She added: “I haven’t had time to grieve yet, I’m still dealing with the death of my son. This was not supposed to happen. My son was supposed to be with me today.
“I’ll always be with him – I tell everyone he has a tattoo of my name on his arm – my son loved me to death and I loved him to death.”
The remarks come ahead of the release of video footage of the incident which has been described as “appalling”. Ms Wells said she hadn’t watched the video and urged people with children not to let them see it.
She also called out the officers involved in the altercation telling them they had “disgraced their own families”.
The family detailed how they had hoped for charges of first degree murder, however they were “satisfied” by the charges levelled against the officers.
Each of five the now-fired police officers face charges of second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression.
Rodney Wells, Tyre’s stepfather, told reporters: “We did push for murder one, that was my main goal. But as the charges were told to us- and they explained the difference between murder one and murder two – we are now very satisfied with the charges.”
He added that the family wanted “peaceful protest”. He said: “Please, please protest but protest safely.”
Four of the five officers charged with the murder of Mr Nichols have been released on bail.
Desmond Mills and Justin Smith each posted their $250,000 bond and were released on Thursday evening.
Emmitt Martin and Tadarrius Bean were released by 4am on Friday. Demetrius Haley has not paid his $350k bond and remains in jail.
Second-degree murder is defined in Tennessee as a “knowing killing of another” and is considered a Class A felony punishable by between 15 to 60 years in prison.
At least two of the officers, including Martin and Mills, are expected to plead “not guilty”, according to their lawyers.
“No one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die,” Martin’s lawyer, William Massey said.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the Nichols’ family, has reviewed the body camera footage and called it “appalling”.
“It is deplorable. It is heinous. It is violent,” Crump added on Monday.
The footage is expected to be released around 7pm ET (12am GMT) tonight.
*This story has not been edited by The Infallible staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.
