The mother of Tyre Nichols has said she is “not going to stop” until every person responsible for her son’s death “is prosecuted to the fullest of law”.
RowVaughn Wells was speaking to US news network MSNBC a day after Memphis Police released bodycam footage showing her son screaming “mom, mom” several times as he was attacked by officers.
Ms Wells said: “I believe in my heart that my son was on assignment from God. He finished his assignment and God took him back home.
“Even though this tragedy happened to my son, I truly believe that there is going to be a greater good that comes out of this.
“And that is what keeps me going to get this justice for my son, because I’m not going to stop until every person that had anything to do with my son’s death is prosecuted to the fullest of the law.”
Warning: This article contains violent images
Ms Wells went on to say that the officers she believes killed her son had “shamed their own families” and continued: “You shame your communities. You just brought a bad taste to everybody’s mouth.
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“I hate the fact that it was five black men that actually did this to another black man. My son probably was their age.
“They just brought disgrace to themselves. I’m not an evil person, my son is not an evil person…. I pray for (the officers’) families, because their families didn’t deserve any of this either.”
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Image: RowVaughn Wells, mother of Tyre Nichols. Pic: AP
Ms Wells and Mr Nichols’ stepfather also repeated their call for people to protest in a non-violent way.
Mr Nichol’s mother earlier said in the same interview: “Tyre was a beautiful person, he was full of life, as you can see he loved to skateboard, he loved to watch the sunsets. He was a great dad.
“He was just a good person. There’s no perfect person in this world, but he was close to it.”
Image: Tyre Nichols called out for his mother three times as he was being beaten
Ms Wells has spoken after Memphis Police announced the SCORPION (Street Crimes Operations to Restore Peace in Our Neighbourhoods) unit, that the five officers charged with murder over the father-of-one’s death were members of, has been “permanently deactivated”.
Memphis Police said in a statement: “In the process of listening intently to the family of Tyre Nichols, community leaders, and the uninvolved officers who have done quality work in their assignments, it is in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate the SCORPION unit.
“The officers currently assigned to the unit agree unreservedly with this next step.
“While the heinous actions of a few casts a cloud of dishonour on the title SCORPION, it is imperative that we, the Memphis Police Department take proactive steps in the healing process for all impacted.”
The move comes after Memphis Police released bodycam footage showing Mr Nichols screaming for his mother while being beaten by officers.
The footage shows police attacked the 29-year-old for three minutes while shouting profanities at him.
Mr Nichols was 80 yards (73 metres) from his family home, according to his mother.
Police have released four separate videos cut into one hour-long clip, including police bodycam footage and footage from a CCTV camera.
Five officers have been charged with second-degree murder and other crimes, including assault, kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression over Mr Nichols’ death.
Image: An officer beats Tyre Nichols with his baton
In the footage of the attack, one camera shows the initial police stop at an intersection in Memphis, Tennessee.
“I’m going to baton the f*** out of you,” one officer can be heard saying. His body camera shows him raise his baton while at least one other officer holds Mr Nichols.
After the first officer roughly pulls Mr Nichols out of his car just after 8:20pm on 7 January this year, the FedEx worker can be heard saying “I didn’t do anything” as a group of officers begins to wrestle him to the ground.
“Get on the ground!,” one officer yells, as another is heard shouting: “Tase him! Tase him!”
The father-of-one calmly replied soon after being wrestled to the pavement: “OK, I’m on the ground.”
Image: Police hold a taser to the leg of their suspect
Moments later, as the officers continue to shout, Mr Nichols says: “Man, I am on the ground.”
An officer yells: “Put your hands behind your back before I break your (expletive).”
Moments later an officer shouts: “Put your hands behind your back before I break them.”
“You guys are really doing a lot right now,” Mr Nichols says loudly to the officers. “I’m just trying to go home.”
“Stop, I’m not doing anything,” he yells moments later.
The camera is briefly obscured and then Mr Nichols can be seen running as an officer fires a Taser at him. The officers then start chasing Mr Nichols.
He is then punched, kicked and hit with a baton. After the beating, officers mill about for several minutes while Mr Nichols lies propped up against the car, then slumps onto the street.
Image: Tyre Nichols is seen trying to flee as a Taser is pointed at him
Emergency workers with what looks like medical equipment attend, but do not immediately intervene.
He died on 10 January, three days after the violent arrest.
The officers involved have been dismissed by Memphis Police Department’s Chief of Police, Cerelyn Davis.
Ms Davis, who became the force’s first black female boss in 2021, previously called for “sweeping changes and police reform” in the aftermath of the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Image: Officers stand around as Tyre Nichols is slumped against a car
Meanwhile, influential civil rights campaigner Al Sharpton said the US has a “new clock” on police accountability following the quick arrest and firing of five officers charged over the death of Mr Nichols.
Speaking at a rally in Harlem, New York, Reverend Sharpton also rejected the idea that there was no race element to the fatal beating of Mr Nichols by the officers just because they themselves are black.
Making a speech at a weekly National Action Network rally, he said: “So there’s a new precedent set now ‘cos this black women police chief messed you up now – ‘cos she said I’m not waiting on nothing – arrest them, fire them.
“You now got a new clock on police accountability. We don’t want to hear no year investigation.”
Image: Clockwise from top left: Police officers Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin III, Tadarrius Bean and Desmond Mills Jr have been charged with murder. Pic: Shelby County Sheriff’s Office
Addressing the involvement of race, he said: “One person said to me well at least it ain’t about race.
“I said the race part of it is those black guys thought they could get away with doing it to a black guy.
“You know you couldn’t get away with doing that in Tennessee to a white guy – and you won’t get away with doing it to a black guy either.”
Meanwhile, at a news conference of city leaders held on Saturday, state representative Joe Towns Jr, echoed the comments of Reverend Sharpton on the force’s prompt investigation.
He also said police chief Ms Davis had his full support, praising her for taking “swift action”.
The comments came as a memorial fund set up in the aftermath of Mr Nichols topped $535,000 (£433,000).
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‘They killed a man who looked like me’
The GoFundMe page, set up by Mr Nichols’ mother, is aimed at helping to pay for a memorial skate park in his honour, as well as to allow his family time off from their jobs to grieve and seek justice.
Protests are taking place in at least nine cities across the US – including Memphis – after the bodycam footage was released.
Mr Nichols’ mother had earlier warned supporters of the “horrific” nature of the video but pleaded for peace saying “tearing up the streets” is “not what my son stood for”.
US President Joe Biden said he was “outraged and deeply pained to see the horrific video of the beating that resulted in Tyre Nichols’ death”.
“It is yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that black and brown Americans experience every single day,” he added.
Before he died alone in his jacuzzi, Matthew Perry had received three injections of ketamine in the space of just six hours. “Shoot me up with a big one,” he told his personal assistant, ahead of the final, fatal dose.
According to court documents, in the period leading up to 28 October 2023, Kenneth Iwamasawas illegally administeringPerry with between six and eight shots of the drug, an anaesthetic that can have hallucinogenic effects, each day.
A live-in assistant, he admitted to finding the actor unconscious at his Pacific Palisades home on at least two occasions in the weeks prior.
The hit that ultimately killed the Friends star was supplied by Jasveen Sangha, also known as the “Ketamine Queen” – a dealer who apparently only dealt “with high-end and celebs”. She has agreed to plead guilty to five charges and will appear in court later today.
Her charges, along with others filed against Iwamasa and others over the supply of ketamine to Perry, exposed part of Hollywood’s underground drug network – and put the spotlight on the world of celebrity, money and power.
Image: Jasveen Sangha was known as the ‘Ketamine Queen’. Pic: Jojo Korsh/BFA.com/Shutterstock
‘Yes men’ with terrible consequences
Perry’s death was met with both utter shock and a sad sense of the inevitable. The world knew him best as Chandler Bing, the comic heartbeat of Friends. But behind the jokes and the sarcasm, he was deeply troubled.
“It almost felt like we’d been mourning Matthew for a long time because his battle with that disease was a really hard one for him to fight,” is how his former co-star Jennifer Aniston described his addiction in a recent interview. “As hard as it was for all of us and for the fans, there’s a part of me that thinks this is better… I’m glad he’s out of that pain.”
The actor was an addict, and vulnerable – but also a huge star, worth millions.
Image: Kenneth Iwamasa was Matthew Perry’s live-in assistant. Pic: APEX / The Mega Agency
Iwamasa was administering the injections, ultimately playing God – but to him, the power most likely lay with his famous boss. His actions may seem inexcusable, but did he feel he had a choice?
“I think it was a situation that increasingly got more and more out of control,” says Bonnie Low-Kramen, a former celebrity assistant turned trainer, and author of Be The Ultimate Assistant.
Image: Photos: Photos: Jojo Korsh/BFA.com/Shutterstock/ APEX/The Mega Agency/ AP/ DoJ/ AP
Those who do the job, especially in Los Angeles, can be put under an enormous amount of pressure, she says, “tasked with doing things many of us wouldn’t imagine carrying out for our employers. It is a job which comes with an inherent power imbalance”.
Which means it can be incredibly hard to say no.
“When people are rich and famous, they often have people around them who won’t say no,” she says. “And assistants are in the yes business anyway.
“We’re in the business of figuring out, ‘well, let’s solve the problem…’. When money is no object, there are new rules that apply in that situation and that can be really hard to handle.”
Iwamasa is not the first celebrity assistant asked to administer or pick up illegal drugs, she says, and Perry is not the first star to die after taking drugs.
Image: Money Iwamasa paid for ketamine. Pic Central District of California Prosecutor’s Office
Ms Low-Kramen highlights the deaths of Janis Joplin, Princeand John Belushi as just a few other examples.
“Unfortunately, there are so many examples of this tragic end, where the abuse of drugs gets to a point where they’ve handled it for a really long time, and then the day comes when it can’t be handled anymore.”
For those struggling with addiction, being surrounded by “yes men” can have terrible consequences, says Garrett Braukman, an addiction treatment executive in Hollywood.
“Treatment is difficult for people when they have yes men. They have a lot of people that are going to tell them you can get whatever you want, you can get drugs, you can get alcohol, you could do whatever, and no one is willing to really look at that from the perspective of how dangerous that is.”
Image: Material prosecutors said was taken from Sangha’s ‘stash house’. Pic: Central District of California Prosecutor’s Office
Mr Braukman says addiction can go hand in hand with fame and that a “high” percentage of his patients work in the entertainment industry.
“I don’t know how I would be able to stay clean and sober if I go to my grandma’s house and there’s 20 guys outside of my grandma’s house taking pictures of me walking in. You become an animal to a degree that people are watching.”
Image: Dr Salvador Plasencia appeared in court in July. Pic: Reuters/Mike Blake
Rise in use of ketamine
The use of ketamine recreationally has been on the rise in recent years, in the UK as well as the US. In England, some 3,609 people started treatment for problems with the drug in the year 2023-2024 – more than eight times the number in 2014-2015, when 426 sought help, according to government statistics.
In January, drag queen The Vivienne was found dead in the bath at their home in Cheshire, aged 32. The star’s family later told how the performer had died “from the effects of ketamine use causing a cardiac arrest”.
Ketamine is usually taken recreationally as a crushed powder, but also sometimes injected or swallowed – making people feel detached and dreamlike. It can also cause severe bladder and kidney problems.
Image: The Vivienne died after taking ketamine in January 2025. Pic: PA
Perry’s struggles with alcohol and other drugs, before ketamine, were long running and well documented, starting with drinking as a teenager before moving on to painkilling prescription drugs Vicodin and OxyContin, and tranquilliser Xanax.
“I have spent upward of $7m (£5.8m) trying to get sober,” he wrote in his memoir, released when he was clean, just a year before his death.
While accepting the almost unsurpassable legacy of the hit show that made him a star, he said he hoped his support for fellow addicts would be the achievement he was best remembered for.
“When I die, I don’t want Friends to be the first thing that’s mentioned – I want helping others to be the first thing that’s mentioned and I’m going to live the rest of my life proving that.”
He only lived for another year.
Image: Perry (centre) with his Friends co-stars David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston and Matt LeBlanc at the Emmys in 2002. Pic: Reuters
Illegal use v therapy
Before he died, Perry had been undergoing legal ketamine infusion therapy to treat depression and anxiety. The drug can be used as a treatment in clinical settings in the US, and some specialist and private centres in the UK – although there are concerns from some medics here about its use even in those settings.
According to a postmortem report, the actor had reportedly been clean for 19 months before he started obtaining the drug illegally as well.
It was not the supervised doses that killed him, but the idea of an addict taking the drug to help their problems might still sound shocking.
Image: Pic: Reuters
In California, ketamine drips are legally used as pain relief, to treat mood disorders and to help with addiction. Other celebrities and notable figures – including Chrissy Teigen, Elon Musk and Sharon Osbourne – have all shared details of ketamine therapy and how it helped them.
Dr Austin Harris, owner and medical director at NeuroRelief Ketamine Infusion Therapy, says historically the drug is “extremely safe” when used in the right conditions, and swears by its effectiveness.
At the clinic in California, he explained to Sky News how it can help people with mood disorders and chronic pain, as well as those in recovery from drug or alcohol abuse.
“Which a lot of people who don’t really understand this at a scientific level might think is an oxymoron,” he says. “But actually, it’s profoundly beneficial – done properly – in resetting both neurologic and psychological patterns for substance abuse.”
Image: Ketamine treatment at NeuroRelief Ketamine Infusion Therapy in LA
Ketamine infusion “restarts in our brain what should already be there”, he says, in terms of “the neurologic road workers, to be able to then direct, to build new patterns and actual new nerve pathways”.
One patient having therapy at the clinic also spoke to us, saying he had abused alcohol and marijuana, and occasionally opiate painkillers, for many years.
“I’ve had enough experience and decades of being addicted to drugs and alcohol and traumas and trying different things,” he said. “When I came out of that infusion I was like, wait a minute. I didn’t have the shakes. I didn’t have the cravings.”
Dr Harris emphasises the need for administration by a professional in a clinical setting. “Matthew Perry was being illegally sold ketamine on the black market. The fact that a doctor happened to be one of several people that was illegally selling it to him should not be confused with the appropriate legal utilisation of ketamine.”
The actor was vulnerable, Dr Harris continues. “It’s absolutely abominable… You have someone with serious addiction problems, lifelong. And sadly, I think that he was really taken advantage of.”
The drugs stash
As well as Sangha and Iwamasa, the others charged over Perry’s death are Erik Fleming, an associate of Perry’s who was in contact with Sangha, Dr Mark Chavez, a physician, and Dr Salvador Plasencia, who also supplied ketamine illegally to Perry.
“I wonder how much this moron will pay,” Dr Plasencia said in a text exchange between him and Chavez.
Image: Dr Mark Chavez, a physician from San Diego, pleaded guilty in court last year. Pic: AP/ Damian Dovargan
After Perry died, Sangha desperately sought to cover her involvement. “Delete all our messages,” she instructed Fleming in a message on Signal.
In March 2024, law enforcement searched Sangha’s home and found 1.7kg of pressed pills containing methamphetamine, 79 vials of liquid ketamine, MDMA (ecstasy) tablets, counterfeit Xanax pills, baggies containing powdered ketamine and cocaine, and other drug-trafficking items such as a gold money counting machine, a scale, a wireless signal and hidden camera detector, drug packaging materials, and $5,723 in cash, according to her plea agreement.
Sangha was happy to supply to Hollywood’s rich and famous – and not an anomaly.
Several books have been written by Tinseltown dealers, and only a few months ago, the Sean “Diddy” Combs trial heard from a former personal assistant to the hip-hop mogul who testified about meeting sellers for his boss.
Now, as she becomes the last defendant to admit her role in Perry’s death, the Ketamine Queen’s guilty plea brings to a close the criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the tragedy.
But in a world where money talks, where fame and addiction or mental health issues often go hand-in-hand, it is unlikely to be the last.
Cardi B has been cleared of assault by a California jury in a civil trial brought by a former security guard.
The $24m (£17.9m) case was brought over an encounter outside an obstetrician’s office in Beverly Hills in 2018.
Emani Ellis alleged the rapper cut her cheek with a fingernail and spat on her.
Cardi B, real name Belcalis Marlenis Almanzar, testified earlier on Wednesday that while an argument between her and Ms Ellis became aggressive, she didn’t touch the security guard.
The Bodak Yellow rapper told the court she had been visiting Los Angeles for promotional work in February 2018, around that year’s NBA All-Star Game.
Image: File pic: Reuters
She said she was four months into her pregnancy with the first of her three children with rapper Offset, and had not publicly shared news of her pregnancy
After attending an appointment at the obstetrician’s office – which had been closed to other patients on a Saturday for her privacy – she said Ms Ellis followed her to her fifth-floor appointment.
Cardi then told the court she heard Ms Ellis say her name into a phone and appeared to be filming her, fearing Ms Ellis would out the fact that she was pregnant.
“I told her, ‘Why are you recording?'” she testified, “and she said, ‘Oh my bad.’ She practically apologised.'”
As an argument broke out, Cardi said “she’s walking into me” and testified that Ms Ellis was bigger than her,
“She is like, security-heavy,” she added. “She just looks a little, like she could protect the building.”
Ms Ellis testified earlier in the trial that the incident left her humiliated and traumatised, and the scar on her face required cosmetic surgery.
The former security guard, who lost her job over the incident, was seeking damages that include medical expenses, compensation for emotional and physical suffering, and lost wages, along with punitive damages.
A US federal judge has ordered a major makeover of Google’s search engine in a crackdown aimed at addressing the damaging effects of monopolistic practices.
In an effort to curb Google’s influence, Washington DC Judge Amit Mehta has introduced new limitations on how the company directs traffic to its search engine.
He is requiring the tech giant to grant current and potential competitors access to key elements of its search engine, including the vast data collected from trillions of queries that enhance the quality of its results.
However, the judge rejected the government’s more ambitious bid to split up the company, and its attempt to compel the firm to sell its widely used Chrome web browser.
And it won’t have to sell mobile operating system Android.
He also stopped short of banning the multibillion-dollar deals that Google has been making for years to lock in its search engine as the default on smartphones, personal computers, and other devices.
Those deals, involving payments of more than $26bn (£19.4bn) annually, were central to a nearly five-year-old antitrust case brought by the US Justice Department.
The 226-page ruling by US District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington DC is still expected to have far-reaching effects on the tech industry, which is being transformed by advances in artificial intelligence.
Platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT are challenging Google‘s dominant role as the internet’s main gateway.