A black man has died, days after fighting with five Baltimore County police officers who were called to his home because he was behaving strangely, and a lawyer for the man's family said it's clear that officers used excessive force.
Tawon Boyd, 21, died yesterday after spending three days in a hospital following the confrontation with officers on Sunday outside his home in Middle River. Police said in a statement that he became aggressive with officers, who used physical force to subdue him.
"They kept on grabbing on him and holding him down, and he started screaming, 'Grandma, Grandma, they're going to kill me,'" Linda Burch, Boyd's grandmother, told The Associated Press. Burch, 51, had been staying with her grandson and witnessed the confrontation across the street from his home.
An autopsy is being conducted to determine the cause of death. A lawyer for Boyd's family, Latoya Francis-Williams, told The Associated Press that Boyd's kidneys and heart failed.
She said it's not clear whether his death resulted from the beating or a medical condition, but she said he hadn't experienced kidney failure previously.
"He didn't have those bruises. He wasn't battered before this. He wasn't unconscious before this," Francis-Williams said today. "All of the physical injuries came from the severe beating he took on Sunday."
Police and Francis-Williams said Boyd's girlfriend called 911 early Sunday morning because he was acting strangely and she thought he needed medical attention.
According to a police report obtained by The AP, the confrontation with police began after Boyd repeatedly banged on the door of a neighbor's home and officers tried to pull him away to keep him from going inside. Police said Boyd also tried to enter several marked police cars. He refused to obey orders to lie down and put his hands on his back, and began grabbing and kicking officers, injuring three of them, police said.
"I think they killed him," Burch told AP. "By them being so many, and they tall and big, and he's small. It didn't take all them police just to try to hold him down."
Boyd was 5-foot-5 and 150 pounds, according to court records.
Francis-Williams said she is still investigating the incident, but she's found no evidence that Boyd was violent before officers started beating him.
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