FBI investigating death of black man in Minneapolis police custody after video shows officer kneeling on his neck

Minneapolis police officers.
(Image credit: Screenshot/Darnella Frazier on Facebook)

Multiple authorities are investigating the death of a black man in Minneapolis police custody after a disturbing video showed an officer kneeling on the man's neck as he protested "I can't breathe."

Around 8 p.m. Monday, police were called to a report of a forgery in progress at a business in Minneapolis, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. When officers found a suspect matching the report's description, they ordered him out of his car and said he complied with their commands, police spokesman John Elder said. But the man later "physically resisted," Elder continued.

As bystander video shows, a white police officer ended up kneeling on the man's neck as he said "I can't breathe" and "everything hurts" over and over. One bystander noted the man's nose was bleeding, and another kept telling the officers "you're stopping his breathing right there" and "you could have put him in the car by now." "He's not responsive right now," one bystander later notes, and after an ambulance arrives for the man, another bystander tells the officer "You just really killed that man, bro." The man was taken to a hospital and later died.

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The officers in the incident were wearing body cameras, and the footage has been turned over to Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said. "Being black in America should not be a death sentence," Frey said Tuesday, adding that "this officer failed in the most basic, human sense."

You can find the disturbing video at Fox 9, and read more at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

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Kathryn Krawczyk

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.