5 Guards and a Nurse Face Charges in Death of Inmate Who Pleaded, ‘I Can’t Breathe’

Five former detention officers and a nurse at a North Carolina jail have been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of a Black man who repeatedly exclaimed, “I can’t breathe,” as the officers tried unsuccessfully to remove his handcuffs, a county prosecutor said on Wednesday.

The man, John Neville, 56, had been booked into the Forsyth County jail in Winston-Salem, N.C., on Dec. 1., 2019, on a charge of assaulting a woman, according to the authorities. About 24 hours later, Mr. Neville experienced an unknown medical condition that caused him to fall from the top bunk of his cell and hit the concrete floor, according to the Forsyth County district attorney, Jim O’Neill.

Detention officers and an on-call nurse found Mr. Neville disoriented and confused and took him to an observation cell, Mr. O’Neill said at a news conference on Wednesday.

Mr. O’Neill did not detail what happened next, or say specifically what role prosecutors believe the officers and the nurse had in Mr. Neville’s death. But he said that over the next 45 minutes, Mr. Neville “would sustain injuries that would eventually cause him to lose his life.”