'The sweetest child': Tyre Nichols remembered a year after fatal police beating

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A year ago Sunday, Tyre Nichols was pulled over by officers with the Memphis Police Department, and beaten.

Nichols, 29 at the time, was taken to the hospital in critical condition for his injuries and died three days later. On Sunday evening, about 100 people — including public officials and activists — gathered with candles at the intersection where the beating took place to honor his memory.

"A year ago today, I lost one of the most precious things that God has ever given me," RowVaughn Wells, Nichols' mother, said to the crowd. "2023 has been a very difficult year. People ask me all the time how am I continuing to stand. I tell them that the people of Memphis — you guys, your prayers that we have received — has kept me and our family going every day. This is the first year without my son."

Wells stood at a podium in front of candles that spelled out "TYRE." The candles were placed near the street sign where he could be seen on pole camera video being beaten by officers. The podium was surrounded by "Justice for Tyre" signs, pictures of Nichols when he was alive and images of Nichols while he was in the hospital after the beating.

"See? This is what Tyre looked like when I walked in the hospital," Wells told the crowd while holding a picture of her son in the hospital. "Does this look like some Taser and some pepper spray? No, it don't. This is what my son looked like. He died right here."

Wells eventually picked up a selfie of Nichols from before the beating, where he was smiling, and compared the hospital image to it.

"This was my son," Wells said through tears. "This is the one I want y'all to remember. I have never seen that video. I will never see that video... I want to remember my son in that picture. I don't want to remember my son in this [hospital] picture.

"This is Tyre," she said, tapping the selfie of Nichols. "This is the sweetest child."

Five Memphis officers involved charged at state, federal levels

Nichols was pulled over for what was initially described by police as reckless driving. But that allegation was later recanted by Davis, saying there was no evidence to suggest he had broken any traffic laws.

The reason for the stop is still unknown, even as three separate sets of litigation are underway.

Five of the officers involved – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills, Emmitt Martin, and Justin Smith – were criminally charged at the state level three weeks after the beating. Their charges include second-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping.

The five officers were then indicted at the federal level on alleged civil rights violations. All five were charged with using excessive force, witness tampering, conspiracy to witness tamper and deliberate indifference.

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The federal charges qualify each officer for the death penalty, but the U.S. Department of Justice said they opted to remove that possibility leaving a maximum sentence of life in federal prison. There is no parole in the federal system.

One officer, Mills, entered a guilty plea in the federal case and the Justice Department suggested he serve 15 years in federal prison. He also entered a plea for his state case, though the official plea will not come until after he is federally sentenced.

The state case will see Mills sentenced to the same amount of prison time as the federal case, and it will be served concurrently with the federal sentence.

Aftermath of Tyre Nichols' death

The Nichols family retained notable civil rights attorney Ben Crump after his death. Crump, alongside a large legal team, filed a federal civil lawsuit against the City of Memphis, the officers involved, and the emergency medical technicians that arrived at the scene the night Nichols was beaten.

The lawsuit requested $550 million in damages, which Crump said was symbolic of $10 million for each year since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and was a message that his legal team was looking to make “financially unsustainable for these police oppression units to unjustly kill Black people in the future.”

Nichols’ death also factored into the Justice Department's decision to launch a pattern-or-practice investigation into Memphis police, the most thorough investigation the federal government can launch into the behavior of a police department.

Community outcry after the beating also spurred local change, with the Memphis City Council passing a slate of ordinances to alter the way the Memphis Police Department policies.

Those ordinances included requirements that the department not conduct traffic stops in unmarked vehicles, officers should not pull over drivers for minor traffic infractions and the department was to create a data dashboard that collected data about the demographics of people pulled over by officers.

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But on Dec. 29, as his term was about to expire, MLK50 reported that former Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland informed the city council through a letter that his administration had not enforced the ordinances, citing questions about the legality of the city council passing ordinances that alter the way the police department works.

Days after taking office, Young said his administration planned to enforce the ordinances and later told reporters that the department had changed its policies to match the ordinances and that they were enforcing them internally.

At the vigil Sunday night, Van Turner, former NAACP president and Memphis mayoral candidate, spoke about the need for the public to hold officials accountable for upholding those ordinances.

"We're going to make sure that the ordinances that were passed are put forth and carried out," Turner said. "We know the last administration said he didn't do it. We're glad that the new administration is doing it. We have to hold their feet to the fire. You have to do it. It's not on his family. Now it's on you."

Lucas Finton is a criminal justice reporter with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com, or (901)208-3922, and followed on X, formerly known as Twitter, @LucasFinton.