Daniel Prude: Police officers suspended after death of Black man in 'spit hood'
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The revelation, the latest in a spate of police killings of black people in the United States, triggered fresh outrage three months after mass demonstrations gripped the United States over the police killing of George Floyd.
The mayor of New York's third largest city has suspended seven police officers involved in the suffocation death of Daniel Prude last March.
Prude, a 41-year-old Black man known to his Chicago-based family as ''Rell,'' died on March 30 when his family took him off life support, seven days after officers who encountered him running naked through the street put a hood over his head to stop him from spitting, then held him down for about two minutes until he stopped breathing.
An emergency medical technician tried to resuscitate him before he was taken to hospital. He died a week later when life support was switched off.
According to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, an autopsy called the death a homicide caused by "complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint."
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren announced the suspension of the officers at a Thursday press conference.
''Mr. Daniel Prude was failed by the police department, our mental health care system, our society and he was failed by me,'' Warren said.
She said she only became aware of the use of force on August 4, and that Police Chief La'Ron Singletary initially portrayed Prude's death as a drug overdose, which is ''entirely different'' than what she witnessed in body camera video.
The mayor said she told the chief she was ''deeply, personally and professionally disappointed'' in his failure to accurately inform her what happened to Prude.
The revelation, the latest in a spate of police killings of black people in the United States, triggered fresh outrage three months after mass demonstrations gripped the United States over the police killing of George Floyd.
On Wednesday some 100 protestors gathered in Rochester, a city home to approximately 200,000 people in western New York state to protest Prude's death.