The father of one had been arrested after being stopped for reckless driving, police said, before being allegedly beaten by the officers for three minutes.
Five black officers involved in the arrest were subsequently sacked after a police investigation found they used excessive force or failed to intervene and help him.
Officials are expected to release bodycam footage of the incident on Friday evening.
“We’re here today because of a tragedy that wounds one family deeply but also hurts us all,” district attorney Steve Mulroy said at a news conference.
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He added that the five officers have been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping and official misconduct.
The Memphis Police Department identified them as Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr, and Justin Smith, who are all black and aged between 24 and 32.
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Each officer had served with the department for around two and a half to five years, and were dismissed from the force last Saturday.
Meanwhile, two Memphis Fire Department employees who were involved in the response were also relieved of their duties during an investigation, a department spokesperson said earlier this week.
President Biden said in a statement: “Outrage is understandable, but violence is never acceptable.
“Tyre’s death is a painful reminder that we must do more to ensure that our criminal justice system lives up to the promise of fair and impartial justice, equal treatment and dignity for all.”
Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said on Wednesday that other police officers remain under investigation for police infractions.
In a video shared on YouTube, she asked for calm when the bodycam footage is made public.
“I expect you to feel what the Nichols family feels. I expect you to feel outrage in the disregard of basic human rights,” she said.
“I expect our citizens to exercise their First Amendment right to protest, to demand action and results, but we need to ensure our community is safe in this process.”
Several recent incidents of police brutality against black people in the US have sparked outrage and calls for reforms in policing.
Second-degree murder will go a considerable distance in meeting public’s expectations
America has been here before. A black man dead at the hands of police officers, brutality captured on camera.
Rodney King and George Floyd are just two names that define a deadly dysfunction in the institution that exists to protect and serve.
Now add Tyre Nichols – 29 years old, a father and family man who worked at FedEx and enjoyed skateboarding. “Nobody’s perfect,” said his mother RowVaugn. “But he was damn near.”
We are told the events leading up to his death are contained in a video lasting an hour, multiple angles of what has been trailed as a savage assault.
A lawyer for the Nichols family spoke of him being beaten “like a human pinata”. The Friday night release of the footage is shrouded by a sense of dread.
Experience shows it is shocking video content of a sort liable to ignite violent street protests and, in Memphis, they are aware of the danger. It explains why the build-up to the release of the footage has been choreographed around charges for the police officers involved.
In a place where the public demands accountability, laying charges of second-degree murder will go a considerable distance towards matching expectations. Murder in the second degree accuses the officers of knowingly killing Mr Nichols.
Does it make a difference that the five men in uniform were black? Perhaps. Time will tell if, and how, that plays into the wider public response.
Much of the reaction, so far, has focused on the power that police have and the inclination to abuse it with deadly consequences. In video form, evidence of it will soon be laid bare – and Memphis is braced.
The Nichols family watched the police footage on Monday with their lawyer, Ben Crump, who compared the beating to the 1991 Los Angeles police assault on Rodney King that was captured on video and sparked protests and police reforms.
“He was defenceless the entire time. He was a human pinata for those police officers,” Antonio Romanucci, Mr Crump’s co-counsel, told reporters.
Mr Crump said Nichols’ last words heard on the video were of him calling for his mother three times.
Students, charged and released with a date in court, are here now to collect their belongings. They’re missing bags, belts, shoes, all lost in the chaos of the night before.
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From the very heart of the protest encampment, our cameras had captured the chaos.
Officers moving in. Tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse. Stun grenades to disorientate.
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They were scenes which have stirred an already fevered debate about Israel and Gaza, yes, but about much more too. About America, about policing, and about free speech too.
President Biden said yesterday: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations – none of this is a peaceful protest.”
‘Wrong’ say the protesters. Their movement, they say, is the very essence of protest; of civil disobedience which is threaded through US college campus history.
They reject any notion that they are threatening or violent. Yet the deeply divisive history of the Israel-Palestine conflict ensures that the beholder will so often be offended by the actions of the other side.
It was the students perceived antisemitism through their pro-Palestinian slogans which had drawn a group of pro-Israel protesters to the encampment earlier in the week.
The chaos of that night was reflected in a statement by the university’s student radio station which has been covering every twist.
“Counter protestors used bear mace, professional-grade fireworks and clubs to brutalize hundreds of our peers, UCLA turned a blind eye. Police were not called until hours into the onslaught and stood aside for over an hour as counter-protestors enacted racial, physical and chemical violence,” the statement from the UCLA Radio Managerial team said.
Watching the clear-up after the nighttime police sweep of the protesters I spotted two people embracing. A young man and an older woman.
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Professor recalls violent arrest at protest
It turned out to be a thread of history. One was a student who’d been arrested the night before.
The other was a student from a past time. Diane Salinger had been at New York’s Columbia University in 1968, at protests which now form a key chapter in American history.
“I’m so proud of these people here. I’m so proud,” she told me.
“You know the civil unrest of the students back in ’68 and it continued for several years, it actually changed the course of the Vietnam War and hopefully this is going to do the same thing.”
But then, back at the police station, a conversation that hints at the wider challenges for America.
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‘Tom’ is a protester who wanted to remain anonymous – a graduate who feels politically deserted in his own country. For him, no government is better than any on offer.
“The problem with our system is that we can’t rely on the police, we can’t rely on the military to keep us safe.
“When we need to make our voices heard, we need to make them heard, and the only way to do that without being repressed is by keeping each other safe and I think that last night and the last few months have really exemplified that,” he told me.
These protests are about more than Gaza. They are aligning a spectrum of dissent.
A scuba dive boat captain has been jailed for four years for criminal negligence over a fire that killed 34 people.
Captain Jerry Boylan was also sentenced to three years supervised release by a federal judge in Los Angeles, California.
The blaze on the vessel named Conception in September 2019 was the deadliest maritime disaster in recent American history.
Boylan was found guilty of one count of misconduct or neglect of ship officer last year.
The charge is a pre-Civil War statute, known colloquially as seaman’s manslaughter, and was designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters.
In a sentencing memo, lawyers for Boylan – who is appealing – wrote: “While the loss of life here is staggering, there can be no dispute that Mr Boylan did not intend for anyone to die.
“Indeed, Mr Boylan lives with significant grief, remorse, and trauma as a result of the deaths of his passengers and crew.”
The Conception was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, 25 miles south of Santa Barbara, when it caught fire before dawn on the final day of a three-day voyage, sinking less than 30 metres from the shore.
Thirty-three passengers and a crew member died, trapped below deck.
Ms Wilson bought her most recent ticket at Family Food Mart in the US town of Mansfield and the shop will receive a $10,000 (£7,900) bonus for its sale of the ticket, according to the Massachusetts State Lottery.
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She bought her first $1m winning ticket at Dubs’s Discount Liquors in the same town.