A man who was severely injured during an arrest by the Baltimore police just died today. News of his death comes after police brutally beat him, sending him to the hospital with a broken spine, according to the local Baltimore Sun.
Freddie Gray, 27, underwent a double surgery to desperately try to fix three broken vertebrae as well as a destroyed voice box on Tuesday. Even after doctors did their very best to save him, he was in bad shape. He died today after remaining in a coma.
We have repeatedly asked police what he was even being arrested for in the first place. They have stood by the description of the arrest for an “undisclosed violation.”
They claim that officers restrained him on the ground, and he “appeared to be fine” when they took him in.
But a cell phone video of the arrest shows a very different situation, one where the arresting officers brutally beat him, causing obvious, grave injury to what appears to be an innocent man. Bearing in mind that the American legal system holds Gray “innocent until proven guilty,” it is no exaggeration to say that until officers proved their case in court, Gray remained innocent until the day he died.
With that in mind, it should further emphasize just how dubious the police refusal to even say what he was being accused of actually is. A beating for an “undisclosed violation” is not going to cut it. The community is demanding answers, but the police are stonewalling us, once again.
Now, protests are breaking out in Gray’s neighborhood.
“What happened to Freddie was unnecessary and uncalled for,” Rev. Jamal Harrison Bryant of the Empowerment Temple said at one of those rallies. “All of those police officers involved need to be held accountable and answer for what they did, and need to be terminated from their positions,” he added.
Watch video via the local report from WJZ-TV below…