Mississippi now has its own George Floyd case.
A video obtained by the Mississippi Center of Investigative Reporting shows Robert Loggins rolling when officers and jailers get on top of him inside the Grenada County Jail, with one officer appearing to kneel on his neck or head.
Three and a half minutes later, they got off of him. The 26-year-old never moved again. More than six minutes passed before anyone checked his pulse or his breathing.
Despite that, the state of Mississippi concluded Loggins’ death was an “accident.” The alleged culprit? Methamphetamine toxicity.
After viewing the video as well as the autopsy report and photos, renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden concluded the death was a homicide. “They killed him by piling on top of him,” he said. “He absolutely died from some kind of asphyxia.”
Prone position increases risk of death
In 1995, the International Chiefs of Police and the Justice Department warned law enforcement officials that keeping people restrained in a prone position increased the risk of death from asphyxia. “As soon as the suspect is handcuffed, get him off his stomach,” the report urged.
If the person must be kept in the prone position, that person “should be closely and continuously monitored,” the report said.
Applying weight to someone’s back adds to that risk, the report said. The more weight, the more risk.
“That’s when you obstruct the ability to inhale,” Baden said.
He explained that the diaphragm enables breathing. Pressing on the back inhibits the diaphragm, he said.
“That’s why deaths occur in the prone position as happened here,” Baden said. “It isn’t just the neck.”
The Justice Department report warns that drug and alcohol intoxication increase the risk of sudden death from asphyxia: “Respiratory drive is reduced, and subjects may not realize they are suffocating.”
The level of meth in Loggins’ system was “very low,” certainly not a fatal amount, Baden said.
If meth had caused Loggins’ death, he would have first fallen asleep, he said.
Instead, Loggins was moving prior to officers piling on top of him, and when the officers got off of him, he was lifeless, Baden said.
Seth Stoughton, co-author of Evaluating Police Uses of Force, said it’s a general rule in policing that “you don’t put body weight on someone’s neck while they’re on the ground, because it can cause significant injury. The risk to the person you are holding down is not worth the benefit, because there are so many safer ways to hold them down.”
He said law enforcement uses a color-coded system to guide officers: green, yellow and red. Green zones are areas that officers can strike, and red zones are areas that officers should avoid, such as the neck, throat, spine and groin.
In the video obtained by MCIR, one officer appears to put his knee across Loggins’ neck or head.
“You should avoid putting body weight on the neck or head,” Stoughton said. “It’s even more well established that you do not do this while someone is restrained in the prone position. As soon as you get someone secured, you get them on their side.”
Despite the warnings nearly three decades ago, many police officers have continued to use these potentially deadly techniques.
In Minneapolis alone, police officers used knee-to-neck restraints on 428 people, 14% of them losing consciousness, between 2012 and Floyd’s death, according to a CNN analysis. Nearly two-thirds of those in neck restraints were Black. By comparison, only one-fourth were White.
The city of Minneapolis paid $3 million to settle litigation involving the 2010 death of 28-year-old David Smith, who suffered from mental illness and died after officers used a Taser on him and held him face down on the floor. One officer kept a knee on Smith’s back even after he stopped speaking. The city of Minneapolis agreed to pay $27 million to settle a civil lawsuit from George Floyd’s family.
In Mississippi, the training manual for Grenada Police Department fails to warn officers about the risk of asphyxia when officers keep handcuffed suspects in the prone position or when officers increase those risks by adding weight to the back or using knee-to-neck restraints.
Expert: George Floyd died from positional asphyxia
More than a quarter century after the Justice Department’s warnings, several Minneapolis police officers got on top of Floyd in the street, one of them, Derek Chauvin, kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes.
“Mr. Floyd died from positional asphyxia, which is a fancy way of saying that he died because he had no oxygen left in his body,” Dr. William Smock, emergency room physician and police surgeon, testified in Chauvin’s trial.
Dr. Andrew Baker, who performed the autopsy, said Floyd’s enlarged heart and the fentanyl in his system contributed to his death, but that the actions by the officers were the main cause.
Former Maryland Chief Medical Examiner David Fowler disagreed, saying he believed Floyd’s drug use and heart condition played a “significant” role in his death.
The defense also pointed to a 2019 study that claims to debunk positional asphyxia. “Our data do not support the hypothesis of restraint asphyxia,” Mark Kroll, a biomedical scientist with the University of Minnesota and California Polytechnical University, and other researchers concluded.
He noted that weights of up to 225 pounds have been placed on a prone subject’s back without causing any breathing impairment. It would “take two or more law enforcement officers, weighing 287 pounds, each standing on the back of a prone subject” for fatalities to take place, he said.
That study, however, involved only 41 subjects — six police recruits and 35 active-duty officers.
The jury is expected to begin deliberations next week in the trial of Chauvin, who is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
‘Y’all going to kill me?’
At 5:40 a.m. on Nov. 29, 2018, a woman in Grenada, Mississippi, telephoned 911, saying, “Someone’s in the back of my house calling for help. Please hurry.”
Five members of the Grenada Police Department responded: Capt. Justin Gammage, Sgt. Reggie Woodall, Cpl. Edwin Merriman, Patrolman Michael Jones and Patrolman Albert Deane Tilley.
They found a Black man face down with his arms tucked beneath his body. One officer recognized him as Loggins, who had battled both mental issues and a drug problem.
In bodycam footage, officers repeatedly asked Loggins to put his hands behind his back. He refused. They used a Taser on him repeatedly.
“Y’all going to kill me?” asked Loggins.
“No, we’re not going to kill you,” an officer replied. “Show us your hands.”
When Loggins refused, they used a Taser on him again.
“In the name of Jesus Christ,” he said and began talking about the 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel in the Book of Revelation. “Like an eagle in the mountains …,” he said.
Grenada police records show they used a Taser on him at least eight times.
The manual produced by the manufacturer, Axon, warns against repeated use of a Taser, saying it increases the risk of a heart attack. More than 1,000 people in the U.S. have died from the weapon, according to Reuters.
When Loggins failed to move his arms, officers began to grab him. Tilley said Loggins bit him on the hand. Bodycam footage showed officers striking Loggins with a flashlight.
After handcuffing him, officers carried him to a carport, where the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation report claims “Loggins’ disorderly behavior” kept EMTs from conducting “a full medical assessment of Loggins.”
But bodycam footage obtained by MCIR paints a different picture. Asked about Loggins’ condition, an EMT can be heard saying, “He looks fine to me,” but the EMT never checked Loggins’ health.
“Is the same dude that was in the hospital not too long ago?” one EMT can be heard asking. “Different guy? Acting the same. All cranked up on (bath salts).”
Officers loaded Loggins into the back of a squad car and drove him to the Grenada County Jail, where jailers had been told that officers were bringing in a “wild one.”
Jail video obtained by MCIR shows that at 5:59 a.m., two officers and two jailers carried Loggins upside down into the lobby of the jail. They left him on the floor handcuffed and in the prone position. They never bothered to pull up his pants.
“Usually when he comes in off of drugs, he’ll be a bit combative,” jail shift supervisor Jerome Johnson recalled, but after that, Loggins calms down “and you’ll be able to talk to him.”
But this time, officers “brought him like he was a sack of potatoes,” recalled shift supervisor Sgt. Edna Clark. “He wasn’t screaming. He wasn’t hollering like he used to do.”
He seemed in distress, rolling from side to side, she recalled. “To me, he was trying to gasp for breath because he couldn’t breathe.”
She said she asked officers to take Loggins to the hospital but was waved off.
To get Tilley his handcuffs, officers and jailers piled on top of Loggins at 6:04 a.m. Tilley appeared to kneel on Loggins’ neck or head.
“They had his back covered,” Baden said. “When you press on the back, you obstruct the ability to inhale.”
When the officers got off of Loggins three and a half minutes later, he failed to move.
“He’s lifeless,” Baden said. “This is why deaths occur in the prone position, and that’s what happened here.”
The autopsy report shows a series of abrasions and contusions on the front of Loggins’ head. There is also a contusion measuring more than an inch and a half on the back of Loggins’ neck.
Baden said these injuries are consistent with pressure on the back of the neck and the lower head.
After this, Tilley left with his handcuffs, and jailers dragged Loggins toward the jail over Clark’s objections, only to drag him back seconds later. Jailers continued to stand around an unmoving Loggins.
“Nobody does CPR,” Baden said. “About 11 minutes later, the EMTs come, but he’s dead already. If they had done CPR, they might have saved him.”
Clark said that Loggins had long been proud of his teeth, but this time she noticed he had missing teeth and that he was bleeding.
She called 911 and said she couldn’t admit him to jail in this condition.
“Ambulance checked him out before they brought him in,” the dispatcher replied.
“He’s bleeding from his mouth. He’s bleeding from his legs,” she said. “I’m not gonna take him.”
But instead of officers taking Loggins to the hospital, he remained handcuffed in the prone position.
At 6:14 a.m., Clark noticed Loggins’ eyes were half open. She checked his pulse and his breathing and called 911.
“I’ve got an unresponsive offender. He was just brought in by y’all,” she said. “This man has got no heartbeat, and he’s not breathing. I want them officers back over here. I want an ambulance … Get them over here now.”
At 6:18 a.m., EMTs arrived. They pounded on his chest in hopes of reviving Loggins, and when they couldn’t, they airlifted him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Five officers were placed on administrative leave with pay, but there was no known discipline. Grenada Police Chief George Douglas did not respond to requests for comment.
When an MBI investigator asked Tilley if his knee was on the neck or head of Loggins, he replied, according to the report, “Not to my recollection, no, sir. I don’t believe it was.”
“When you say you don’t believe, either you were or you were not,” the investigator responded.
“No, sir, I was not,” Tilley replied. “I was not on his head.”
The MBI investigation concluded there was “no foul play,” citing the autopsy’s cause of death, methamphetamine toxicity.
Loggins’ wife, Rika Jones, the administrator for his estate, is now suing those involved, accusing them of causing her husband’s wrongful death. The couple’s son is now 11.
“This case represents a systemic failure to treat a man named Robert Loggins as a human being,” said her attorney, Jacob Jordan of the Oxford law firm of Tannehill, Carmean & McKenzie. “Robert was a father, a husband, a son and a brother. He had many struggles in this life, but in the end, the actions and failures of those directly responsible for his well-being took not only his life, but also any chance of his redemption here on Earth.”
Jerry Mitchell is an investigative reporter for the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization that is exposing wrongdoing, educating and empowering Mississippians, and raising up the next generation of investigative reporters.
If you have any tips for our continued reporting on health care access in Mississippi, please email [email protected]. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
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