Five fired Mem­phis po­lice of­fi­cers were charged Thurs­day with mur­der and oth­er crimes in the killing of Tyre Nichols, a Black mo­torist who died three days af­ter a con­fronta­tion with the of­fi­cers dur­ing a traf­fic stop.

Shel­by Coun­ty Dis­trict At­tor­ney Steve Mul­roy told a news con­fer­ence that al­though the of­fi­cers each played dif­fer­ent roles in the killing, “they are all re­spon­si­ble.”

The of­fi­cers, who are all Black, each face charges of sec­ond-de­gree mur­der, ag­gra­vat­ed as­sault, ag­gra­vat­ed kid­nap­ping, of­fi­cial mis­con­duct, and of­fi­cial op­pres­sion.

Video of the Jan. 7 traf­fic stop will be re­leased to the pub­lic some­time Fri­day evening, Mul­roy said. Nichols’ fam­i­ly and their lawyers said the footage shows of­fi­cers sav­age­ly beat­ing the 29-year-old FedEx work­er for three min­utes in an as­sault that the le­gal team likened to the in­fa­mous 1991 po­lice beat­ing of Los An­ge­les mo­torist Rod­ney King. His fam­i­ly urged sup­port­ers to protest peace­ful­ly.

Nichols’ step­fa­ther, Rod­ney Wells, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press by phone that he and his wife, Row­Vaughn Wells, who is Nichols’ moth­er, dis­cussed the sec­ond-de­gree mur­der charges and are “fine with it.” They had sought first-de­gree mur­der charges.

“There’s oth­er charges, so I’m all right with that,” he said.

Asked about the kid­nap­ping charges, the dis­trict at­tor­ney said: “If it was a le­gal de­ten­tion to be­gin with, it cer­tain­ly be­came il­le­gal at a cer­tain point and was an un­law­ful de­ten­tion.”

David Rausch, di­rec­tor of the Ten­nessee Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion, said he saw the video and found it “ab­solute­ly ap­palling.”

“Let me be clear: What hap­pened here does not at all re­flect prop­er polic­ing. This was wrong. This was crim­i­nal,” Rausch said dur­ing the news con­fer­ence.

Court records showed that all five for­mer of­fi­cers — Tadar­rius Bean, Demetrius Ha­ley, Desmond Mills Jr., Em­mitt Mar­tin III and Justin Smith — were tak­en in­to cus­tody.

Mar­tin’s lawyer, William Massey, con­firmed that his client had turned him­self in. He and Mills’ lawyer, Blake Ballin, said their clients would plead not guilty. Lawyers for Smith, Bean and Ha­ley could not be reached.

“No one out there that night in­tend­ed for Tyre Nichols to die,” Massey said.

Both lawyers said they had not seen the video.

“We are in the dark about many things, just like the gen­er­al pub­lic is,” Ballin said.

Sec­ond-de­gree mur­der is pun­ish­able by 15 to 60 years in prison un­der Ten­nessee law.

Lat­er Thurs­day, Nichols’ moth­er and step­fa­ther were joined by sev­er­al dozen sup­port­ers on a cold night for a can­dle­light vig­il and prayer ser­vice at a Mem­phis skate park. Nichols, who had a 4-year-old son, was an avid skate­board­er.

Row­Vaughn Wells thanked those who at­tend­ed, then added that her fam­i­ly is “grief strick­en.”

She warned sup­port­ers of the “hor­rif­ic” na­ture of the video set to be re­leased Fri­day, but she plead­ed with sup­port­ers to “protest in peace.”

“I don’t want us burn­ing up our city, tear­ing up the streets, be­cause that’s not what my son stood for,” she said. “If you guys are here for me and Tyre, then you will protest peace­ful­ly. You can get your point across, but we don’t need to tear up our cities, peo­ple, be­cause we do have to live in them.”

This combo of images provided by the Memphis Police Department shows, from top row from left, officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, bottom row, from left, Desmond Mills, Jr. and Justin Smith. The five former Memphis police officers have been charged with second-degree murder and other crimes in the arrest and death of Tyre Nichols, a Black motorist who died three days after a confrontation with the officers during a traffic stop, records showed Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023. (Memphis Police Department via AP)

Ac­tivists and cler­gy led the group in prayer and a drum­mer played a steady rhythm to lead in­to the spo­ken part of the vig­il. Af­ter­wards, skaters rode their boards as Wells and her hus­band watched.

The at­tor­neys for Nichols’ fam­i­ly, Ben Crump and An­to­nio Ro­manuc­ci, is­sued a state­ment say­ing that Nichols “lost his life in a par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­gust­ing man­ner that points to the des­per­ate need for change and re­form to en­sure this vi­o­lence stops oc­cur­ring dur­ing low-threat pro­ce­dures, like in this case, a traf­fic stop.”

The Rev. Al Sharp­ton, who runs the Na­tion­al Ac­tion Net­work and will de­liv­er the eu­lo­gy at Nichols’ fu­ner­al ser­vice next week, called the charges “a nec­es­sary step in de­liv­er­ing jus­tice” for Nichols.

“There is no point to putting a body cam­era on a cop if you aren’t go­ing to hold them ac­count­able when the footage shows them re­lent­less­ly beat­ing a man to death,” Sharp­ton said. “Fir­ings are not enough. In­dict­ments and ar­rests are not con­vic­tions. As we’ve done in the past... we will stand by this fam­i­ly un­til jus­tice is done.”

At the White House, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden said the Nichols fam­i­ly and the city of Mem­phis de­serve “a swift, full and trans­par­ent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“Pub­lic trust is the foun­da­tion of pub­lic safe­ty, and there are still too many places in Amer­i­ca to­day where the bonds of trust are frayed or bro­ken,” Biden said in a state­ment.

The Mem­phis po­lice chief has called the of­fi­cers’ ac­tions that night “heinous, reck­less and in­hu­mane.”

“This is not just a pro­fes­sion­al fail­ing. This is a fail­ing of ba­sic hu­man­i­ty to­ward an­oth­er in­di­vid­ual,” Mem­phis Po­lice Di­rec­tor Cere­lyn “CJ” Davis said in a video state­ment re­leased late Wednes­day on so­cial me­dia.

Davis said the five of­fi­cers found to be “di­rect­ly re­spon­si­ble for the phys­i­cal abuse of Mr. Nichols,” were fired last week, but oth­er of­fi­cers are still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for vi­o­lat­ing de­part­ment pol­i­cy. In ad­di­tion, she said “a com­plete and in­de­pen­dent re­view” will be con­duct­ed of the de­part­ment’s spe­cial­ized units, with­out pro­vid­ing fur­ther de­tails.

Two fire de­part­ment work­ers were al­so re­moved from du­ty over the Nichols’ ar­rest.

As state and fed­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue, Davis promised the po­lice de­part­ment’s “full and com­plete co­op­er­a­tion” to de­ter­mine what con­tributed to Nichols’ Jan. 10 death.

Mul­roy told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press on Tues­day that lo­cal and state in­ves­ti­ga­tors want­ed to com­plete as many in­ter­views as pos­si­ble be­fore re­leas­ing the video. The timetable has ran­kled some ac­tivists who ex­pect­ed the video to be re­leased af­ter Nichols’ fam­i­ly and the fam­i­ly’s lawyers viewed it Mon­day.

Crump said the video showed that Nichols was shocked, pep­per-sprayed and re­strained when he was pulled over near his home. He was re­turn­ing home from a sub­ur­ban park where he had tak­en pho­tos of the sun­set.

Po­lice have said Nichols was stopped for reck­less dri­ving and at some point fled from the scene.

Rel­a­tives have ac­cused the po­lice of caus­ing Nichols to have a heart at­tack and kid­ney fail­ure. Au­thor­i­ties have on­ly said Nichols ex­pe­ri­enced a med­ical emer­gency.

When video of the ar­rest is pub­licly re­leased, Davis said she ex­pects peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty to re­act, but she urged them to do so peace­ful­ly.

“None of this is a call­ing card for in­cit­ing vi­o­lence or de­struc­tion on our com­mu­ni­ty or against our cit­i­zens,” she said.

One of the of­fi­cers, Ha­ley, was ac­cused pre­vi­ous­ly of us­ing ex­ces­sive force. He was named as a de­fen­dant in a 2016 fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit while em­ployed by the Shel­by Coun­ty Di­vi­sion of Cor­rec­tions.

The plain­tiff, Cor­darl­rius Sledge, stat­ed that he was an in­mate in 2015 when Ha­ley and an­oth­er cor­rec­tions of­fi­cer ac­cused him of flush­ing con­tra­band. The two of­fi­cers “hit me in the face with punch­es,” ac­cord­ing to the com­plaint.

A third of­fi­cer then slammed his head to the ground, Sledge said. He lost con­scious­ness and woke up in the fa­cil­i­ty’s med­ical cen­tre.

The claims were ul­ti­mate­ly dis­missed af­ter a judge ruled that Sledge had failed to file a griev­ance against the of­fi­cers with­in 30 days of the in­ci­dent. —MEM­PHIS, Tenn. (AP)

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Sto­ry by ADRI­AN SAINZ and RE­BEC­CA REYNOLDS | As­so­ci­at­ed Press.
Re­bec­ca Reynolds re­port­ed from Lex­ing­ton, Ken­tucky. As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­porters Aaron Mor­ri­son in New York and Travis Loller in Nashville con­tributed to this re­port.