Family, friends, and concerned locals are still expressing shock, dismay, and grief over the death of Milwaukee resident D’Vontaye Mitchell, a 43-year-old husband and father of two who died after being held face down and beaten by security guards at the downtown Hyatt Regency hotel. Mr. Mitchell was reportedly unresponsive and pronounced dead when first responders later arrived at the scene of the incident.
On Aug. 6, Todd Alan Erickson, 60, Brandon LaDaniel Turner, 35, and Herbert T. Williamson, 52, all of Milwaukee, and Devin W. Johnson-Carson, 23, of South Milwaukee, each face a charge of felony murder.
According to several local and national media outlets, Milwaukee County prosecutors announced they filed charges against the four men for the June 30 incident.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, co-counsels Will Sulton and B’Ivory Lamaar, and the family of D’Vontaye Mitchell held a news conference July 29 after their initial July 8 news conference in front of the Hyatt Regency to renew their demands for accountability from those criminally and civilly responsible for the Black man’s death.
“Security guards allege Mitchell entered the hotel and ‘caused a disturbance,’ had an altercation with security guards while being escorted out and was ‘detained’ until police arrived,” Atty. Crump said of the initial narrative, as asserted by the hotel’s security staff.
“Mitchell was unresponsive when officers got there and was pronounced dead at the scene. A witness reported seeing three to four security guards with their knees on Mitchell’s neck and back and one of them striking him in the head with an object,”
Atty. Crump’s statement, posted to his firm’s website, read, recounting Mr. Mitchell’s death on hotel grounds. “Shocking cell phone video corroborates accounts of several witnesses,” the statement continued.
In his July 8 news conference, in front of the Hyatt Regency hotel, Atty. Crump told those in attendance that the actions of hotel security, working at the behest of the hotel and its franchise owners, engaged in excessive force, leading to the death of the unarmed Mr. Mitchell and that his begging for his life only fell upon deaf ears.
According to a summary of the Medical Examiner’s (ME) Report obtained by The Final Call, the final manner of Mr. D’Vontaye Mitchell’s death was “homicide,” as determined by Lauren A. Decker, M.D., which was caused by “restraint asphyxia.”
Additional information obtained by The Final Call included “video surveillance footage showing prone restraint using the body weight of four individuals on the extremities, back, and head” of Mr. Mitchell lasting approximately eight minutes.
The ME’s office also confirmed Mr. Mitchell suffered blunt force injuries to the head, extremities, upper and lower parts of his body, and photos revealed abrasions, lacerations, scattered contusions, and hemorrhaging on his face, scalp, and lips. The report was dated July 31.
“His last words on this earth while he was alive was: ‘Please! Please! Please! Please! Please! Please!’ He said ‘please’ six times, and then he said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he said that twice, then he said, ‘Please help me! Please help me!”’ Atty. Crump said, regarding the video and audio recordings from the deadly encounter that were first made public over social media and then through national news outlets.
“Did the security personnel working at the behest of Hyatt and its franchise owner help him?” he asked. “No! They didn’t; they killed him!” Atty. Crump exclaimed.
Laid to rest July 11, after a capacity funeral service at Holy Redeemer Institutional Church of God in Christ in Milwaukee, Rev. Al Sharpton said in his eulogy that upon arriving in the city, he received word that the security guards had been fired and said their dismissal was a good start, but that it was not enough.
“You should not just lose just your job when D’Vontaye lost his life,” Rev. Sharpton insisted. “What they did was a crime and criminals need to be prosecuted, and criminals need to face the penalty of their actions. This wasn’t a mistake at the job, this was taking somebody’s life and there is no justice until you pay for the life you take,” he said. “That’s good The Hyatt fired them, but you shouldn’t stop there.”
Protests surrounding D’Vontaye Mitchell’s death were among many demonstrations that took place in Milwaukee during the Republican National Convention in front of the Hyatt Regency, which was one of the main hotels during the GOP gathering. However, Mr. Mitchell’s family and friends said they were not deterred from expressing their grievances.
Expressing frustration over what she said was silence from local authorities in the immediate aftermath of her cousin’s death, Latrisa Giles told The Final Call that to family and extended family, a lack of support from their city in a time of loss was as hurtful as the incident was traumatic.
“They haven’t given us any updates, they haven’t said a word,” Ms. Giles told The Final Call weeks after her cousin’s death. “MPD hasn’t said anything, the Hyatt didn’t say anything, and neither has the DA’s office.
We’ve been marching and protesting from day one since this has happened, and because we’ve been out there, we’ve protested in front of The Hyatt. We did a balloon release in front of The Hyatt, and we protested in front of the DA’s office,” she said.
“A day before D’Vontaye’s funeral, the police captain reached out and offered his condolences and said he was sorry that no one said anything.”
On August 7, USA Today newspaper reported that Atty Crump told media outlets: “The legal team and the family are relieved the district attorney is filing charges. But we can’t be satisfied until we get a conviction. We’re going to keep fighting until we get full justice for this family. And we’re going to keep showing up … to make sure they don’t just get a slap on the wrist,” he said.
Speaking on behalf of her immediate family and siblings, Nayisha Mitchell, D’Vontaye’s oldest sister, told The Final Call that the killing of her brother took place sometime in the midafternoon on June 30 and that she found out about it after detectives visited her mother’s home later that evening. Nayisha Mitchell said that she immediately went to see her mother upon receiving the news.
“When I got there, I could hear her crying real loud from outside, and once I got inside, the detectives were still there and they said there was an incident that happened down at the Hyatt hotel and they said my brother wasn’t shot or he wasn’t stabbed, but that he was deceased and that it was still being investigated.
They had a picture of him on one of their cell phones for us to pretty much identify him, and that pretty much was it, they didn’t have any more information,” Ms. Mitchell recounted.
DeAsia Harmon, D’Vontaye Mitchell’s widow, told The Final Call in a telephone interview that she and her husband had been married for eight years and that they had a daughter with whom he was very close. He also had a son from a previous relationship with whom he was also very close.
“He loved his children,” Ms. Harmon said.
She also spoke about the Black community’s battle for survival on two fronts: one against the fratricidal violence resulting from ingrained self-hatred, and the other from a history of virulent racism toward Black life in American society. Ms. Harmon said her husband faced a perfect storm of the two on June 30, the day he was killed.
“Our lives are valuable, and a few of the people who took his life were African American,” Ms. Harmon explained. “I feel once we start valuing our own lives, people outside of our own community will start valuing us as well,” she insisted.
“They don’t respect us enough to value our lives, they see us as pawns and as property, not as human beings,” she said of the hotel employees who were reportedly arrested. “Three of them were African Americans and one of them was a White man.”
Nation of Islam Student Minister William Muhammad, of Mosque No. 3 in Milwaukee, under the leadership of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, told The Final Call that the July 29 news conference to renew the call for charges against the perpetrators, and to call for more transparency in the investigation, helped to bring charges against the accused, although more information may be forthcoming.
“The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan said we are fighting a war on two fronts, and on one hand, it refers to the systems of White supremacy, the hostility from law enforcement, the hostility from the court system, and all of the systems that militate against the poor, the Black, and the Indigenous people,” Student Minister Muhammad said.
“On the other hand, we are the number one murderers and killers of each other,” Student Minister Muhammad noted. “When the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan took us to Washington, D.C., on 10.10.15, Justice or Else, he asked the question: ‘How could we demand justice from the government when we are being unjust to ourselves?’
But even in the self-destruction that’s being manifested in our community, where we are so quick to kill each other, so quick to be hostile to one another, like in this situation, it’s the result of decades of a gross self-hatred that goes deep in our psyche, and that self-hatred manifests itself in our treatment of one another,” he said.
Regarding the work and efforts of the membership of Milwaukee’s Mosque No. 3, Student Minister Muhammad said the men and the women of the Nation of Islam, under the leadership of Minister Farrakhan, will continue spreading the word with those who will hear it and will continue to serve the needs of those suffering the pain of loss.
“Our message to the youth is in the core teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Minister Farrakhan, which is self-knowledge, which produces self-love and self-respect, then an understanding of the time that we’re living in, what must be done, the nature of the enemy, and a picture of the trap that the enemy has set and how our own actions may or may not play right into the trap,” Student Minister Muhammad said.
“It starts with self-love, knowledge of self and the knowledge of God.”
