Ohio prosecutors announced reckless homicide charges against two police officers following the death of a man who was handcuffed and left face down on the floor of a social club in Canton while telling police he couldn’t breathe.
Stark County Prosecutor Kyle Stone told reporters Saturday that charges against Canton Officers Beau Schoenegge and Camden Burch were brought by a grand jury in the April 18 death of Frank Tyson, a resident of Stark County. East Canton aged 53, arrested shortly after a car accident. accident which severed an electrical pole.
Police body camera footage showed Tyson, who was black, resisting and repeatedly saying, “They’re trying to kill me” and “Call the sheriff” as he was taken to the ground, and he told the police officers that he couldn’t breathe.
The officers told Tyson that he was fine and to calm down and stop fighting while he was handcuffed face down, and the officers joked with bystanders and looked through Tyson’s wallet before realizing he was in a medical crisis.
The county coroner’s office ruled Tyson’s death a homicide in August, also citing heart disease and cocaine and alcohol intoxication as contributing factors.
Stone said they are third-degree felonies carrying a maximum sentence of 36 months in prison and a $10,000 fine. He said in response to a question on Saturday that there was no evidence to support the charges against a bystander.
The Stark County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Saturday that Schoenegge and Burch were booked into the county jail. An official said there was no information available on who might represent them. Canton police said earlier that both men had been placed on paid administrative leave in accordance with department policy.
The Tyson family’s attorney, Bobby DiCello, said in a statement that the arrests were a relief because the officers involved in what he called “Tyson’s inhumane and brutal death will not escape prosecution.” But he called it “bittersweet because it formalizes what they’ve known for a long time: Frank is the victim of a homicide.”
County NAACP President Hector McDaniel called the accusations “consistent with the behavior we have observed.”
“We believe we are moving in the right direction toward transparency, accountability and truth,” McDaniel said, according to the Canton Repository.
Tyson had been released from state prison on April 6 after serving 24 years in a kidnapping and robbery case and was almost immediately declared a post-release supervision violator for failing to report to a parole officer, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. .
