VIDEO SHOWS DEPUTIES PILING ON VA. MAN

Surveillance video from a state psychiatric hospital in Virginia shows a group of sheriff ’s deputies and medical staff members piling on a handcuffed man, Irvo Otieno, and pinning him on the floor for around 11 minutes, until his death on March 6.

The video shows at least seven deputies from the Henrico County Sheriff ’s Office entering a room at Central State Hospital in Dinwiddie County and dragging Otieno, who is in handcuffs and leg shackles. The deputies set him up against a small seat and then, when he appears to make a movement, swarm around him and force him to the floor, where they pinion him until his death, the video shows.

The Dinwiddie County prosecutor, Ann Cabell Baskervill, has charged seven sheriff’s deputies and three employees of the hospital with second-degree murder. On Tuesday afternoon, a grand jury in Dinwiddie County formally indicted the 10, confirming the prosecutor’s charges.

Otieno, who struggled with mental health problems and had been taken from his home three days earlier, was moved to Central

State Hospital by sheriff ’s deputies from a county jail earlier March 6. In the video, people who seem to be part of the medical staff are seen walking in and out of the room as the deputies pile on Otieno, 28, pinning his legs and arms and holding his body down with their knees. The video was first obtained by The Washington Post and then by The New York Times.

Otieno’s family said that while he was in the jail, he was deprived of medication that he needed for his mental illness. They disputed initial police reports that he was violent at the first hospital where he was taken.

“All the systems failed my son,” his mother, Caroline Ouko, said in an interview Monday.

When the episode started three days earlier, Ouko said, Otieno appeared to be experiencing mental distress. He had walked to a neighbor’s lawn and picked up some solar-powered lights laid out on the property, and was banging on the neighbor’s front door before his mother retrieved him.

A neighbor called the Henrico Police Department to report someone breaking and entering. Officers who responded placed Otieno under an emergency custody order and took him to a hospital “for further evaluation,” the police said in a statement.

At that hospital, police said, Otieno was “physically assaultive” toward officers, who arrested him, took him to the Henrico County Jail and charged him with three counts of assault on a law enforcement officer and one count each of disorderly conduct in a hospital and vandalism.

Otieno was kept in the jail over the weekend, and then was taken on March 6 to the state hospital.