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Tyre Nichols’s mother says she feels sorry for the five Memphis police officers who are charged with killing her son by beating him “to a pulp”, but says they brought “shame on their own families and the Black community”.
RowVaughn Wells was speaking in an emotional live interview on CNN on Friday morning one day after the officers, who are all Black, were charged with murder in the beating death of her son following a traffic stop in the city earlier this month.
“People don’t know what those five police officers did to our family. And they really don’t know what they did to their own families. They have put their own families in harm’s way,” she said.
“They have brought shame to their own families. They brought shame to the Black community. I just feel sorry for them. I really do. Because they didn’t have to do this.”
Wells spoke of seeing her 29-year-old son, whom she said was “my baby, a momma’s boy”, in the hospital after the beating, which was captured on a “horrific” video set to be released publicly on Friday evening.
“They had beat him to a pulp. He had bruises all over,” she said.
“His head was swollen like a watermelon. His neck was busting because of the swelling. They broke his neck. His nose was like an S. They actually just beat the crap out of him, so when I saw him, I knew my son was gone. Even if he did live he would have been a vegetable.
