Tyre Nichols’s mum says ‘blood will be on hands’ of Congress if bill limiting police officer immunity not passed
Tyre Nichols’s mother said “blood is going to be on the hands” of Congressmen and women if they fail to pass a bill that would limit immunity for US police officers.
US vice president Kamala Harris and celebrated civil rights activist Rev Al Sharpton urged Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act at Mr Nichols’s funeral in Memphis on Thursday.
RowVaughn Wells, the mother of the 29-year-old who died three days after being beaten by police, said: “We need to get that bill passed. The next child that dies, the blood is going to be on their hands.”
She paid tribute to her son, saying: “Tyre was a beautiful person and for this to happen to him is unimaginable.
“The only thing that’s keeping me going is thinking my son was sent here on assignment from God. I guess now his assignment is done and he’s been taken home.”
Mr Nichols’s siblings also paid tribute to their brother. His sister said: “He was robbed of his life, his passions and his talents but not his light.”
She said when she heard the news, “I lost my faith, I cried, I screamed at God asking how he could let this happen”.
“My cries turned to anger and my anger turned to deep sorrow when those monsters murdered my baby brother. They left me completely heartbroken.
“My family will never be the same and I will always love my baby brother forever.”
After being invited to the pulpit by Rev Sharpton, Ms Harris said: “Let our memory of Tyre shine a light on the path towards peace and justice.”
Kamala Harris at Tyre Nichols’ funeral
Ms Harris praised the “courage and strength” of Tyre Nichols’s family.
“We mourn with you and the people of this country mourn with you.
“Mothers around the world when their babies are born pray to God when they hold that child that that body and that life will be safe for the rest of his life.
“Yet we have a mother and a father who mourn the life of a young man who should be here today.
“They have a grandson who now does not have a father. His brothers and sisters will lose the love of growing old with their baby brother.
“When we look at this situation, this is a family who lost their son and their brother through an act of violence at the hands and the feet of people who had been charged with keeping them safe,” she said.
Tyre Nichols
“Was he not also entitled to the right to be safe?”
Rev Sharpton criticised the police officers who beat Tyre Nichols.
Recalling the death of Martin Luther King in Memphis 55 years ago when he was campaigning for the rights of black workers, he asked: “In the city that they slayed the dreamer, what has happened to the dream?”
“Five black men who wouldn’t have had a job in the police department… in the city that Dr King lost his life, not far away from that balcony, you beat a brother to death.
“There’s nothing more insulting and offensive. You didn’t get on a police department by yourself. People had to march and go to jail and some lost their lives to open the doors for you.
“How dare you act like that sacrifice was for nothing,” he said.
Read more: Punched, kicked and tasered: Timeline of violent arrest of Tyre Nichols
The families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, who were killed by police officers in 2020, as well as Oscar-winning director Spike Lee were among hundreds of mourners in the church.
The funeral took place in Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis with the church’s celebration choir singing a chorus of “we love you Tyre” as mourners entered the church.
Photographs taken by Mr Nichols, as well as images of him as a child and doing his beloved hobby of skateboarding were shown to mourners along with a quote attributed to the 29-year-old: “My vision is to bring my viewers deep into what I am seeing through my eye and out through my lens.”
RowVaughn Wells cries as she and her husband Rodney Wells attend the funeral
Mr Nichols’s black coffin was draped with a white bouquet of flowers and a painting of Martin Luther King and other prominent figures and slogans was placed beside it.
Tiffany Rachal, mother of 29-year-old Jalen Randle who was shot by a police officer in Houston in 2022, dedicated a song to Mr Nichols’s family, saying: “I pray that God heals your broken heart. We are fighting together.
“All the mothers all over the world need to come together and stop all of this,” she said.
Read more:
The deadly assault draws painful parallels for Americans who are no strangers to videos of police violence
‘I’m not going to stop’ fighting for justice, says Tyre Nichols’s mother
Mr Nichols was aggressively punched, kicked and hit with a baton by several Memphis police officers after he was pulled over in a traffic stop on 7 January.
Five police officers have so far been charged with second-degree murder and fired while two other officers were suspended from duty.
Memphis Fire Department also fired three staff members after an investigation found Mr Nichols was left without medical attention for almost 15 minutes after the assault.
Protests have taken place in several US cities after the footage of the attack was released.
Robert Fico is a populist leader who staged a political comeback last year.
The 59-year-old has previously been compared to former US president Donald Trump.
But his election victory last autumn meant NATO also had another leader who was sympathetic to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Robert Fico in ‘life-threatening condition’ after assassination attempt – follow live updates
Critics have voiced increasing fears Mr Fico would abandon Slovakia’s pro-Western course.
This would echo some of the concerns raised about Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, another NATO member.
Thousands of people have repeatedly held protests across Slovakia against his policies.
Mr Fico and his SMER, or Direction party, secured nearly 23% of the votes at the polls in October.
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Slovak PM bundled into car after being shot
He is known for foul-mouthed tirades against journalists and has campaigned against immigration and LGBTQ+ rights.
The prime minister has previously opposed EU sanctions on Russia – and has been against Ukraine joining NATO.
Mr Fico was shot and injured on Wednesday. Pic: AP
He believes the US and other nations should use their influence to force Russia and Ukraine to strike a compromise peace deal.
Mr Fico also repeated Mr Putin’s unsupported claim that the Ukrainian government runs a Nazi state from which ethnic Russians in the country need protection.
The politician founded the SMER party in 1999 and has served as the nation’s prime minister for over 10 years across three different spells.
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Slovakian president-elect Peter Pellegrini called the apparent assassination attempt ‘a threat to everything that has adorned Slovak democracy so far’
Born to a working-class family, Mr Fico graduated with a law degree in 1986 and joined the then ruling Communist Party.
After the 1989 fall of communist rule, he worked as a government lawyer, won a seat in parliament under the renamed Communist Party, and represented Slovakia at the European Court For Human Rights.
With a campaign based on overturning austerity reforms, Mr Fico started his first four-year spell as the country’s leader in 2006.
He returned as leader in the parliamentary elections of 2012, but failed in an attempt to win the presidential election of 2014.
In 2016, despite winning the parliamentary polls, Mr Fico’s party was unable to secure a majority and after a multi-party coalition allowed him to remain as leader, he resigned in 2018.
As leader of the largest party following the October 2023 election, Mr Fico formed a coalition with Voice – Social Democracy (Hlas) and the Slovak National Party, and began his fourth term as prime minister.
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All three coalition parties are either leftist or nationalist and, having previously expressed anti-American views, he has spoken about what he called Western influence in Ukraine’s war which only led to Slavic nations killing each other.
His popularity among some, however, has been based on promises to protect the living standards of those left behind in a country where conditions for many are only slowly catching up with western Europe and where many hold relatively fond memories of a communist-era past.
Ukraine should make ‘compromise’
Earlier this year, Mr Fico reiterated his controversial belief Ukraine should give up territory to end the war with Russia.
In January, he told Slovak public broadcaster RTVS: “There has to be some kind of compromise.
“What do they expect, that the Russians will leave Crimea, Donbas and Luhansk? That’s unrealistic.”
In the same interview, he added Ukraine’s membership of NATO would “merely be a basis for World War Three” and Ukraine was “not an independent and sovereign country” which instead was under the “influence and control” of the US.
Protests were held in Bratislava this month over potential changes to broadcaster RTVS. Pic: Reuters
Protests against controversial changes to TV and radio
Two weeks ago, thousands of people demonstrated against his controversial overhaul of Slovakia’s radio and TV services.
Critics said it would result in the government taking full control of the media.
The proposed changes would mean the public broadcaster known as RTVS would cease to exist and be replaced by a new organisation.
“If Fico takes control of RTVS, it would mean a decisive step on the way towards Orban and Putin,” Michal Simecka, of the main opposition party Progressive Slovakia, told thousands of protesters in the capital Bratislava.
In April, Mr Fico refused to back the implementation of the EU’s new migration system in his country.
The bloc’s new pact set out new security and asylum procedures as well as proposed quotas.
He said: “We are saying unequivocally that you cannot order a country that it must accept, in the Slovak case, up to 300 migrants you know nothing about, or pay €20,000 per each.”
World
‘It allows us to do our job’: Ukrainian artillery team buoyed by fresh ammunition after costly wait on frontline
Sat in a makeshift shelter on the outskirts of a frontline town in eastern Ukraine, the soldier – callsign “Zaur” – shared some rare, good news: new ammunition appeared to be arriving.
He did not know the precise details but said fresh supplies started to be delivered about a week or two earlier.
This was making a difference for his artillery team as they fought to defend Chasiv Yar from advancing Russian forces.
Follow latest: Missiles launched at Crimea
“It allows us to do our job, to hold off Russian soldiers, to restrain them, and also to destroy them when they attempt counterattacks,” Zaur said.
Ukrainian troops have been losing ground in the Donbas and now face a reopened front in the northeastern region of Kharkiv as they run short of ammunition and weapons following delays in the delivery of munitions from their allies, in particular the United States.
Even though American weapons are finally arriving to the frontline, the wait has been costly.
Zaur described the fight for Chasiv Yar, which has long been a Russian target. “It’s pretty intense. There are battles every day,” he said.
Should the hilltop town fall, it would give the invaders access to higher ground, enabling them to target artillery fire onto a wider area and putting cities in the remaining parts of the Donbas that are still under Ukrainian control at greater risk.
Asked whether Ukraine would manage to fend off the Chasiv Yar attack, the soldier, who commands the artillery unit, said: “We’ll try to hold on as much as possible, and time will tell…
“We’ll try our best… to do what’s necessary to survive.”
A Sky News team was shown around the artillery position under the cover of patchy woodland, next to some grassy mounds. Booms could be heard from distant fighting.
In a sign of the battle moving closer, soldiers had just finished digging a deep, narrow trench, which ran from the already-sheltered location of their self-propelled artillery gun – a 2S1 Gvozdika that fires 122mm rounds.
The trench had taken three days to dig. It had only been finished on the day we visited the area last week and – the soldiers said – had already been used to shelter from incoming rounds.
Russian troops have been trying to push into Chasiv Yar for the past year after seizing the nearby city of Bakhmut.
In recent weeks, though, they appear to have been edging closer – with a Ukrainian military medical stabilisation point forced to pull back to a city called Kostiantynivka.
Read more:
‘This is just the first wave’: Drones reveal new attack
Putin seizes chance as Ukraine waits for weapons
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Russian soldiers advance in Ukrainian drone footage
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As we looked at the artillery site, there was suddenly an ominous sound.
A powerful rocket – I was not able to see it – was flying overhead.
Over a radio held by a soldier, a voice could be heard saying: “It was coming straight at us, then veered towards a five-storey building. It flew low, damn it.”
Within minutes, we became aware of another danger – a drone.
One of the troops said he thought it was a Ukrainian drone but from our position, it seemed impossible to be sure.
We were told that the commander thought it best for us to leave.
As we walked – quickly – across some open ground between two patches of tree cover, one of the Sky News team thought they could hear a self-exploding attack drone in flight.
Again, it was not possible to know for sure what was making the noise, but then came the sound of an explosion, though the impact site was not in the immediate vicinity.
In a final reminder of the battle, as we headed towards our vehicle, it was possible to see a black dot hovering above the trees – yet another drone.
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