- The accused officers defended their action, saying that Otieno turned violent and assaulted a police officer who responded to the distress call.
- The officers had charged Otieno after apprehending him and before his death with three counts of assault on a law enforcement officer.
A Kenyan family in the US has suffered a major setback in seeking justice for their son killed by police.
This is after a court released five of the 10 law enforcement agents charged with killing Irvo Otieno.
Caroline Ouko, the mother of Otieno, now wants the country’s Department of Justice to take up the case from the hands of Virginia state prosecutors, saying justice will not be served.
The nine Henrico County police officers and one mental health official had been indicted and charged with second degree murder. Two of the 10 had been released earlier last year leaving eight defendants.
His elder brother Leon Ochieng’ had explained that Otieno was nursing bipolar disorder.
At the time of his encounter with the police officers, Ochieng' said his brother was “suffering a mental illness breakdown and was already vulnerable when his life was brutally taken on March 6, 2023 by Henrico County Deputy sheriffs.”
As the officers manhandled him, Ocheing’ said, “Irvo did not put up a fight, he was in handcuffs and leg shackles, weak and tired and yet they still used excessive force to kill him.”
Surveillance video showed the nine officers, and one mental health official, descend on the helpless man lying face down for 11 minutes.
But now, the family is back to square one, after Dinwiddie Commonwealth’s Attorney Amanda Mann, the prosecutor in the case, filed an application of “no pros” for five of the remaining eight defendants, and the judge agreed, setting them free, for now.
Ouko protested the decision, saying that she had met with Mann to protest her “radical, reckless decision.”
The family said the development was a massive set back, making them relieve the unending nightmare of the sudden killing of the promising 28-year-old artist.
“Where are you the Department of Justice? It is time for you to bring your boots to Richmond [Virginia] and stand for Irvo. And get justice for my son,” grief-stricken Ouko said on May 7.
She said that it was heartbreaking to leave prosecuting the five accused officers to chance and that bringing the charges back depended largely on discretion.
She said that each waking day, the pain of sudden loss of “my baby and protector lives with me.”
“Days are long and nights are long. There is no single day that we never think about him and miss him,” Ouko added.
One of the family attorneys said that the prosecution has promised to fast track the case against the remaining three before considering bringing back the discharged five.
“[The prosecutor] has explained to the family that her intention is to go forward with what she considers to be strategic cases and then thereafter, bring to back to the grand jury and re-indict the five individuals released for now,” the lawyer said.
He added: “She... assures us that this is just a reconfiguration [...] But we’ve been waiting, as Ms Ouko said, 14 months today. We don’t want to hold our breath anymore.”
Otieno grew up in the US and spent all his school years in the country before venturing into his music career.
He was an aspiring recording artist and also worked as a basketball coach.
The development in the case is a huge setback for the family after some flicker of hope emerged last year that an out of court deal with the Virginia state government had been reached to pay them Sh8.5 million.
The New York Times reported last year that the area governor Glenn Youngkin was helpful in pushing for the amount to help alleviate the suffering that Otieno's family faced.
"Macaulay Porter, a spokeswoman for Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, said in a statement that Otieno’s death was a profound tragedy and that the governor had “pushed for a settlement with the hope that doing so proactively and fairly might alleviate—in a small way— some of the suffering that Irvo’s mother and brother faced, recognising that no settlement can take the place of a loved one," the paper reported at the time.
On how Otieno landed into police hands, media reports say that when he experienced the mental health episode in March last year, he walked to a neighbour’s lawn, picked up some solar-powered lights laid out on the property and banged on the neighbour’s front door before his mother retrieved him.
The neighbour called the police from the local Henrico County station to respond, calling it an attempted break-in.
The police responded and took him to a local hospital where they put him under emergency order.
The accused officers defended their action, saying that Otieno turned violent and assaulted a police officer who responded to the distress call.
The officers had charged Otieno after apprehending him and before his death with three counts of assault on a law enforcement officer and one count each of disorderly conduct in a hospital and vandalism.