Bodycam footage of the altercation is expected to be released later on Friday evening.
His family said the “very horrific” video showed officers savagely beating the FedEx worker for three minutes in an assault their lawyers likened to the Los Angeles police attack on motorist Rodney King in 1991.
Five sacked officers, who are all black, have been charged with second-degree murder and other crimes, including assault, kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression, over Mr Nichols’s death.
Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, who is representing his family, said when the public watches the footage they will see him calling out for his mother.
He said: “When you all see this video, you’re going to see Tyre Nichols calling out for his mum.
“He calls out three times for his mother. His last words on this earth are, ‘mum, mum, mum’. He’s screaming for her. When you think about that kidnapping charge, he said ‘I just want to go home’.”
“It’s a traffic stop for God’s sake. A simple traffic stop.”
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Mr Nichols’s mother, RowVaughn Wells, told reporters: “For a mother to know their child was calling them in their need and I wasn’t there for him. Do you know how I feel right now? Because I wasn’t there for my son.”
Ms Wells recalled she had “a really bad pain in my stomach” and once she found out what happened she realised “that was my son’s pain that I was feeling”.
“For me to find out my son was calling my name, you have no clue how I feel right now,” she added, struggling to hold back tears.
She also said she had not yet seen the video but urged anyone with children not to let them watch it.
“I have never seen the video but what I have heard is very horrific.”
She added the charged officers had “disgraced their families”.
“I want to say to the five police officers who murdered my son, you also disgraced your own families when you did this.
“But I am going to pray for you and your families. Because this shouldn’t have happened. We want justice for my son.”
She has pleaded for peaceful protests.
Police pulled Mr Nichols over for alleged reckless driving before there was an “altercation” where officers used pepper spray on him, according to Shelby County district attorney Steve Mulroy.
Mr Nichols then tried to flee on foot and another altercation followed, he added.
His family say the officers beat him and the injuries he sustained during the encounter led to his death.
Relatives accuse police of causing him to have a heart attack and kidney failure. Authorities have only said he experienced a medical emergency.
The officers were assigned to the ‘scorpion’ unit which focuses on violent street crime. The family’s lawyers want it to be disbanded.
Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis has said the department will review scorpion and other specialised units.
President Joe Biden said the Nichols family and the city of Memphis deserve “a swift, full and transparent investigation”.
“Public trust is the foundation of public safety, and there are still too many places in America today where the bonds of trust are frayed or broken,” he added.
The parents of an Israeli hostage have told him “we love you, stay strong, survive” after he appeared with part of his arm missing in a video released by Hamas.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin was kidnapped at the Nova musical festival when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October.
The video shows him with his lower left arm missing; witnesses said it was blown off when he helped throw grenades out of a shelter where people were hiding.
He reportedly used his shirt as a tourniquet to stem the bleeding, but was captured.
Clearly under duress in the undated video, the 23-year-old criticises Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, saying they should be “ashamed” for not securing the hostages’ release.
He also claims Israeli bombings have killed “about 70 detainees like me” and that the rest are living in an “underground hell without water, food, or sun”.
Mr Goldberg-Polin, who wears a red shirt and sits against a plain white wall, finishes with an appeal to his parents, telling them “stay strong” and “I love you so much, and miss you so much”.
His parents responded to Wednesday’s video by filming their own emotional response.
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Jon Polin says hearing his son for the first time in more than 200 days is “overwhelming”.
“We are relieved to see him alive but we are also concerned about his health and wellbeing as well as that of all the other hostages, and all of those suffering in this region,” he says.
Mr Polin calls for the countries involved in negotiations to “be brave, lean in, seize this moment and get a deal done to reunite all of us with our loved ones and end the suffering in this region”.
His mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, stares resolutely into the camera and tells him: “Hersh, if you can hear his, we heard your voice today for the first time in 201 days… I am telling you – we are telling you – we love you, stay strong, survive.”
The 23-year-old was born in California but moved to Jerusalem with his family when he was younger.
He was among about 250 Israelis and foreigners kidnapped in the initial Hamas attack, which also killed around 1,200 people.
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Baby saved from womb of dying mother
Israel’s aim to wipe out Hamas has so far killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health authority.
Hundreds of thousands are also said to be on the brink of starvation and have been forced to flee the violence.
Fears are growing that a ground assault on the southern city of Rafah – where more than a million people are sheltering – is imminent after Mr Netanyahu said Israel was “moving ahead” with its plans.
“Because it’s built to withstand both biological and chemical attacks,” Dr Yehezkel Caine told Sky News as we entered the complex, “we have an airlock which is built of two separate sets of blast doors”.
Beyond they have installed a whole new level of wards below the existing underground hospital, ripping out a logistics floor and installing more beds and equipment.
The bunkers would be activated should other hospitals closer to the front need evacuating.
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They are planning for worst-case scenarios here like an all-out war with Hezbollah.
“The hospitals in the north will be overwhelmed with casualties and they themselves will come under fire, in which case they would have to evacuate their patients to the centre of the country, the same as we did in the first weeks of the war in the south,” said Dr Caine.
He and his staff know the 7 October attack last year by Hamas and Iran‘s missile and drone barrage earlier this month have changed everything for the people of Israel.
“For the civilian population since the war of independence we’ve never been in a situation where the threat to the civilian population has been as great,” he said.
Above ground, the Herzog Medical Centre continues with its peacetime specialisms.
It has Israel’s largest ventilator unit, treating adults and children, but also excels in psycho-trauma treatment and geriatric rehabilitation.
Many of those suffering PTSD from the trauma in this conflict are treated here.
A 16-year-old boy has been arrested by anti-terrorism police in France after he allegedly said on social media he wanted to “die a martyr” at the Olympic Games in Paris this summer.
A spokesperson said on Wednesday the boy was arrested after he “publicly announced on social media that he planned to create an explosive belt to become a martyr”.
The teenager was arrested at his parents’ home on Tuesday after the alleged posts on Telegram the day prior, BFMTV reported.
The French outlet also reported that a search of the teenager’s home found handwritten papers in which he allegedly declared support for Islamic State.
The spokesperson said that an investigation was under way into whether he had genuine intentions to commit a terrorist act.
The government also asked 45 foreign countries to contribute several thousand extra military, police and civilian personnel to help safeguard the games, Reuters reports.
Earlier this month, Mr Macron said he was confident the opening ceremony, planned to take place on the River Seine, would go ahead but that France had “plan Bs, and even plan Cs” just in case.
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This came in the face of concerns over potential security threats to the Games.
The 26 July event is set to be the first Olympic opening ceremony held outside a stadium setting and will see about 10,500 athletes parade through the heart of the French capital on some 160 boats on the Seine along a 3.7-mile route.
But if issues did arise, Mr Macron said that the ceremony could be restricted to the central Paris Trocadero square, facing the Eiffel Tower.
Another option would be to move the event indoors, to the Stade de France.