Murder charges filed against officers in Black man's death

By GENE JOHNSON

Associated Press

SEATTLE — The Washington state attorney general on Thursday filed murder charges against two police officers in the death of Manuel Ellis, a Black man who died after telling the Tacoma officers who were restraining him that he couldn’t breathe.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement he charged officers Christopher Burbank and Matthew Collins with second-degree murder and Timothy Rankine with first-degree manslaughter. The charges were filed in Pierce County Superior Court.

Ellis, 33, died on March 3, 2020, in handcuffs from lack of oxygen caused by being restrained. The Pierce County medical examiner called his death a homicide.

His final words — “I can’t breathe, sir!” — were captured by a home security camera. The medical examiner’s report also listed methamphetamine intoxication and heart disease as factors in his death.

Ellis’ death — just weeks before George Floyd’s death under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer triggered a nationwide reckoning on race and policing — made Ellis’ name synonymous with pleas for justice at protests in the Pacific Northwest.