Two days ago, I watched the police videos of my brother’s October 3 murder. They were shocking, not just because I sat next to my mother as we watched my little brother getting tortured to death in broad daylight while he begged “Someone, please help me!” and cried out “What did I do?”. They were shocking because they contradicted, in every single particular, the statement that the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office released and to which San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe referred in multiple news outlets after my brother’s murder.
Thus begins a harrowing account of the execution of Chinedu Valentine Okobi on October 3rd, 2018 by San Mateo County, California deputies, as told by his sister, Ebele Okobi.
In it she details the lies her family was told by the Sheriff and the DA...
Lie #1: According to the San Mateo County Sheriff’s office and District Attorney Wagstaffe’s statements, my brother was “running in and out of traffic”. My brother was not walking in and out of traffic when the deputy noticed him. He was walking on the sidewalk, as people do.
Lie #2: At no point was the deputy in danger, there was nothing about a man crossing the street at an intersection that was an emergency.
Lie #3: My brother never attacked any of the deputies. He did not assault anyone. My baby brother, as big as he was, didn’t even defend himself.
Lie #4: My brother died on the scene, not on the way to the hospital, not at the hospital. They didn’t even pretend to try to revive him.
She relates how they tasered him...
He has the presence of mind to keep his hands in the air, even as Deputy Wang holds the taser and continuously sends volts of electricity through his prone body. He is not fighting, just crying in pain. I will never forget the visual of his hands, waving above his head, open, begging. He begs them to take the taser prongs off of him. He tries to pull them off himself.
and the account of how he dies is even more horrific. I won’t reproduce it here. Read it if you will in the Facebook entry, which makes an impassioned plea for the truth, and for justice, ultimately concluding:
No mother should ever have to watch her child get tortured to death, and especially not by people whose duty is to protect and serve. And no District Attorney, elected by the people to uphold the law and seek justice on behalf of the people, should sanction the extra-judicial torture and killing of unarmed citizens who have committed no crime.