‘You all had to know you were killing him’

After viewing surveillance video of his March 6 death at Central State Hospital, the family of 28-year-old Henrico man Irvo N. "Ivor" Otieno expressed shock and outrage Thursday at the actions of the seven Henrico Sheriff’s deputies and three now-former Central State employees who are now charged with his murder.

“My son was treated like a dog – worse than a dog,” Otieno’s mother, Caroline Ouko, told members of the media outside the Dinwiddie County courthouse. “He was murdered. They smothered the breath out of my baby. They murdered my baby. Why did they do that?”

The video, family attorney Mark Krudys and civil rights attorney Ben Crump said, was disturbing and heartbreaking to watch. They described Otieno, handcuffed and legs shackled, being pushed to the ground by two or three deputies shortly after being led inside the hospital by deputies. What followed, they said, was a period of more than 11 minutes during which all seven deputies exerted extreme force and pressure upon all parts of his body, until he went lifeless.

“What I witnessed today, I just can’t find words for it, actually,” Krudys said. “Every part of his body is being pushed upon, hard, for the duration of the 11 minutes. It’s unrelenting. When you see the video, you will be shocked.”

More stunning and outrageous, Krudys said, was that none of the 10 deputies or hospital staff members appeared to consider Otieno’s health, and none reacted with urgency after he became lifeless.

“You see people standing around with their hands in their pockets and looking away,” he said. “There was an appreciable amount of time before rescue efforts started. Deputies drift away out of the room into conversation with themselves. There were many people in that room, and they had a duty to intervene – an obligation to step in and say, ‘No.’

“It went through their mind – it had to have – and they simply did not act.”

Dinwiddie County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ann Cabell Baskervill has not yet indicated when or if the videos might be made public.

Charged with second-degree murder in Otieno’s death are Henrico Sheriff’s deputies Randy Joseph Boyer, 57, of Henrico; Dwayne Alan Bramble, 37, of Sandston; Jermaine Lavar Branch, 45, of Henrico; Bradley Thomas Disse, 43, of Henrico; Tabitha Renee Levere, 50, of Henrico; Brandon Edwards Rodgers, 48, of Henrico; and Kaivell Dajour Sanders, 30, of North Chesterfield; as well as former Central State employees Darian M. Blackwell, 23, of Petersburg; Wavie L. Jones, 34, of Chesterfield; and Sadarius D. Williams, 27, of North Dinwiddie County.

In court Wednesday, Baskervill indicated that Otieno died of asphyxia. A defense attorney involved with the case suggested that two medical injections he was given at the hospital may have caused his death, but Baskervill said that his heart already had stopped before the injections. The state medical examiner has not yet determined a cause of death.

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On Thursday, Crump (who represented the family of George Floyd, a 46-year-old man who was murdered by police in Minneapolis in 2020) called for the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene in the case because he believes Otieno’s constitutional rights were violated and because the case involves multiple jurisdictions. He suggested that a release of the videos might need to wait until DOJ officials view them but was direct in his assessment about whether they should be made public at all.

“Any time there’s video, the public should see the video, because that’s what going to help us heal is accountability,” he said. “They didn’t have to brutalize him for those 11 minutes. He was by himself, handcuffed with leg irons. What possible threat could he have posed?”

Ouko told reporters that her son had struggled with mental illness since his time as a senior at Freeman High School in the county’s West End and that on March 3, he experienced what Krudys described as a “mental health stress” episode, during which he apparently was gathering solar lights on a residential property.

Henrico Police officers were called to investigate a possible breaking-and-entering in the 8800 block of Fordson Road just after 11:30 a.m., identified Otieno as a suspect and placed him under and emergency custody order. Members of the division’s Crisis Intervention Team also were on the scene to assist, and officers took Otieno to the crisis receiving center at the nearby Henrico Doctors’ Hospital’s Parham campus.

There, Ouko said, he was being treated successfully – and actually had fallen asleep for a period of about 40 minutes – before deputies arrived unexpectedly shortly after midnight and took him to the county’s jail.

“The doctor told me was was treating him and he was going to be alright,” she recalled.

A police statement March 14, however, indicated that Otieno “became physically assaultive towards officers” at the hospital, though it was unclear what time that action took place.

Ouko said she wasn’t certain why her son was taken suddenly from the hospital to the county’s jail, though police officials indicated last week that Otieno had been charged with five crimes – three counts of assault on a law enforcement officer; disorderly conduct in a hospital; and vandalism.

Krudys said it is common for mental health patients to spend as many as 72 hours at a hospital, however – even if they are facing legal charges.

“We see no reason for them to have transferred him to a jail. We don’t know what the circumstances are,” he said.

Ouko told reporters that she doesn’t believe her son had any of the medicine he was taking to control his mental health issues with him during his three days at the county’s jail.

On Tuesday, Henrico Police for the first time indicated that they had encountered Otieno March 2 – a day before taking him into custody – after a person called them to the 2200 block of Haviland Drive because he was concerned about the behavior of a neighbor. That street is just a few blocks away from Fordson Road, and the neighbor was Otieno, according to police.

But after officers spoke with Otieno and a family member, they reclassified the call as a mental health problem and filed no charges.

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On Thursday, Otieno’s family members also saw brief surveillance video from his time at the Henrico Jail and described his treatment there as “inhumane.”

Video showed him naked and alone in a cell, with feces on the floor nearby, when several deputies entered and forced him to the ground aggressively to restrain him, Krudys said.

“They came in with great force,” he said, adding that after seeing the video, Ouko wondered whether her son might have suffered a head injury during the incident.

He also was pepper-sprayed at some point during his time there, according to Crump, who said when Otieno was taken out of the jail to be transported to Central State, “it’s like an animal being carried by legs and arms with pants falling off him into the vehicle.

“They never ever tried to give him the benefit of the doubt that this is a man that’s having a mental health crisis,” Crump said.

In a statement earlier Thursday, Henrico Commonwealth's Attorney Shannon Taylor said that her office also is investigating the incidents.

“I want to assure the public that I am conducting a review of what happened in the Henrico jail on March 6, 2023, including studying the video evidence," she wrote. "This will be a thorough and comprehensive investigation of what occurred, and I will be releasing my findings upon its completion. I understand and share the public’s concerns and will do whatever I can to determine what occurred and how.”

But for a brief moment during which she choked back tears at the thought of her son, Ouko (who came from her native Kenya with her husband when Irvo was four years old) was composed and resolute as she spoke with reporters.

“Justice I want. Questions I have. Answers I need,” she said poignantly. “Because my son’s life was taken away from him. He was murdered, and it should not go in vain. As long as I’m living and I have breath in me . . . I will step for my son, 10 toes down.”

She described Otieno as a budding hip-hop musician, a caring friend to many and someone who was a unifying force.

“It’s not only me who is mourning,” she said. “This young man had good friends in this community. My community is mourning.”

Otieno's brother, Leon Ochieng, said that mental illness shouldn't be viewed as a crime.

"Every single family in America, you are dealing with mental illness in the family, one or two or three people are dealing with mental illness," he said. "You should have confidence and knowing that the local police or local government is working to make sure that the care that you receive from the minute that they deal with you is at most focus on preserving your life but not ending it."

As they watched the video of Otieno’s death, Krudys said he and the others felt anger and helplessness.

“We’re all in the room watching the video saying, ‘Do something, do something,’” he told reporters. “It is just heartbreaking to see his partial nude, lifeless body on the ground.”

Crump echoed those remarks, saying the the lack of awareness or concern from deputies and hospital officials was staggering.

“When his body was clearly lifeless, that’s when you saw the concern for the first time,” he said. “Your mind is boggled. At what point did you not understand that putting a knee on somebody’s neck who is handcuffed – after George Floyd – is not a good thing? That it will lead to someone’s death.

“You all had to know you were killing him.”