The New York Times - USA (2020-06-25)

A22 N THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALTHURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2020

FRONT PAGE
An article on Wednesday about
testimony before the House Ener-
gy and Commerce Committee on
the new surge in coronavirus
cases misspelled the given name
of one of the doctors testifying.
He is Adm. Brett P. Giroir, not
Brent.

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK

An article on Tuesday about
Nordic countries that have closed
their borders to Sweden because
of concerns about the coronavirus
misspelled the given name of the
editor in chief of Altinget, a politi-
cal website, and incorrectly ren-
dered a portion of a quote from
him. The editor is Jakob Nielsen,
not Jacob. Mr. Nielsen referred to
the divide between Denmark and
Sweden as the “deepest since the
Second World War,” not the deep-
est since “the First World War.”

SPORTS

A picture caption with an article
on Saturday about a German
league’s sequestered competition
during the pandemic, misstated
the given name of a player on the

N.B.A.’s Washington Wizards. He

is John Wall, not Kevin.

ARTS

An article on Wednesday about a

letter to the director of the

Guggenheim from the museum’s

curators calling for greater diver-

sity in its staff, board and exhibi-

tions misstated the timing of the

Guggenheim Museum’s decision

to hire Ashley James as a curator.

It was days after a panel discus-

sion in November 2019, not sev-

eral months later.

OBITUARIES

An obituary on Wednesday about

the movie producer and financier

Steve Bing referred incorrectly to

his relationship with Lisa Bonder,

the mother of his daughter. It was

not the case that they had been

married and were divorced. The

obituary also included an incom-

plete list of Mr. Bing’s survivors.

In addition to those named, he is

survived by his parents.

Errors are corrected during the press

run whenever possible, so some errors

noted here may not have appeared in

all editions.

Corrections

in shootings that has become a

flash point in a debate over police

reform in the city.

Natasha Allen, Ms. Johnson’s

mother, said her daughter was a

budding entrepreneur who de-

spised violence. She had partici-

pated in recent protests in Man-

hattan around the police killing of

George Floyd in Minneapolis.

“She was very adamant about it,”

Ms. Allen said.

Ms. Johnson and Mr. Branch

had announced the party to their

friends on social media. Hours be-

fore the party, Ms. Johnson wrote

on Facebook: “It’s a ‘function/

vibe’ everyone wear a mask

paaaaaleaseee.”

A few hours later, she shared a

video of her drinks, called nut-

crackers, in the freezer. The bot-

tles were labeled with flavors like

Mango Madness, Watermelon,

Patrón Strawberry Lemonade

and Buddy Water. “Y’all ready?”

she wrote in the caption.

Shania Herbert, 23, said she had

sometimes helped Ms. Johnson

prepare her concoctions, which

also included Jell-O shots and

shots in syringes.

“She made those with love,” Ms.

Herbert said. “She made it so ev-

erybody could enjoy it, have fun.”

The surveillance video that the

police released showed three men

walking close to the silver BMW

after it pulled up near the party.

One reached inside the front pas-

senger window and another ap-

peared to be dancing.

After the shooting, the video

showed the three men get into the

car, one in the driver’s seat, one in

the front passenger seat and the

A hundred people gathered on a
recent Friday night at a park in
the Bronx, where two friends were
hosting a party to celebrate their
recent graduations.
Tyana Johnson, a 19-year-old
business major who had com-
pleted her associate degree, was
selling cocktails she had made
and labeled Tipsy T. Her friend
Ahmad Branch, who had just fin-
ished high school, was deejaying.
R&B, hip-hop and dancehall
tracks rose in the cool air in
Shoelace Park on June 12. People
happily danced on the grass and
relaxed on park benches.
The good times lasted a few
hours. Then, around 11 p.m., a sil-
ver BMW pulled up. Two men got
out of the car and fired eight shots
into the crowd, the police said. Ms.
Johnson, 19, was struck in the
head and killed. Two teenage boys
and a man were also wounded.
More than a week later, investi-
gators are still searching for the
gunmen, who sped off in the car
with three other men, according to
surveillance video from a nearby
building. The police have in-
creased the reward for informa-
tion about the shooting to $10,000.
“She wasn’t the intended tar-
get,” Rodney Harrison, the chief of
detectives, said in an interview,
adding that it made no difference.
“Her family is torn apart. So we
really need somebody to come for-
ward to help us with the investiga-
tion.”
Chief Harrison posted the video
of the gunmen on Twitter and
pleaded for the public’s help. He
said that there were no cameras
inside the park to capture the
shooting and that witnesses were
unable to identify the gunmen,
who covered their faces in hoods
and masks. Just one tip had come
in through the Police Depart-
ment’s Crime Stoppers tip line, he
said, but it had not helped to solve
the crime.
Seven months ago, the killing of
a white college student in Manhat-
tan drew the Police Department’s
highest-ranking officials to the
crime scene and months of media
coverage. But the death of Ms.
Johnson, who is black, during a
pandemic and national uprisings
over police brutality and racism
has drawn far less attention.
Ms. Johnson was one of more
than 20 people killed in the first
three weeks of June amid a surge

dancing man in the back seat,

where he was joined by a fourth

man.

The car lurched forward, nearly

striking a bystander. A fifth man

jumped in the back seat and the

driver sped off.

Mr. Branch said he heard the

gunshots as he was playing “Re-

turn of the Mack,” and he mistook

them for fireworks that people at

the party had been setting off.

“I’m on the microphone saying,

‘Calm down, y’all,’ ” he said.

“That’s when my friend came up

to me and said, ‘Tyana got shot.’ ”

They rushed over to Ms. John-

son. Blood poured from her head,

Mr. Branch said. They picked her

up and put her into a car that

drove her to the hospital.

“I saw her face, I saw all the

blood on it,” Mr. Branch recalled.

“I have all of her blood on my shirt,

my pants, my shoes. I have not

been able to clean it off.”

Ms. Johnson was transferred to

Jacobi Medical Center, where

emergency room surgeons tried

to save her, her family said. The

doctors finally told her family

members she wouldn’t survive

and allowed them into operating

room, her mother said.

There, in the hospital where she

was born, Ms. Johnson died with

her mother holding her hand.

“There’s no words that can de-

scribe that,” her mother said.

“They took a piece of me.”

Ms. Johnson had finished her

associate degree in business ad-

ministration at Monroe College

last fall and had started taking on-

line classes toward a bachelor’s

degree in business management,

Jacqueline Ruegger, a school

spokeswoman, said.

Ms. Allen said her daughter

wanted to start a business and be-

come a millionaire by the time she

turned 21. Ms. Johnson promised

her mother that she would never

have to work again.

“She was very ambitious and

she was a go-getter for whatever

she wanted to achieve,” Ms. Allen

said.

Ms. Allen, who immigrated

from Jamaica, said she had moved

her family to Connecticut three

years ago to raise her children in a

safer environment with more op-

portunities. Ms. Johnson was the

oldest of her four children and her

only daughter.

“The Bronx is very busy and the

crime rate is high,” she said. “I just

wanted to give the kids a better

life.”

Ms. Johnson loved to eat

seafood, and her favorite restau-

rant was Sammy’s Fish Box on

City Island, where she would or-

der shrimp, crab and lobster, her

mother said. She also liked trying

new hairstyles and made her own

wigs, including a hot pink wig in a

photo widely circulated after her

death.

At a vigil the day after the

shooting, mourners turned a mon-

ument to William White Niles, a

critical figure in the history of

parkland in the Bronx, into a me-

morial for Ms. Johnson.

They placed more than 200 can-

dles around the statue along

Bronx Boulevard at 226th Street,

and held red, pink and white bal-

loons. A few held gold-foil balloons

spelling Tyana.

In unison, they said her name

and released the balloons. In one

video of the vigil, a man could be

heard shouting, “Tyana, we love

you!” as a woman wept.

Flowers and empty bottles of te-

quila and cognac sat between the

candles last week, and wax drip-

pings formed the shape of a heart

next to the letter T on the memori-

al’s stone base.

Photographs of Ms. Johnson

were taped to black poster board

that held Crime Stoppers posters

offering a reward for information

about the shooting. Her friends

had written things like “rest easy

baby,” “pretty girls live forever,”

and “may tipsy-t live on in your

name.”

Ms. Branch and Ms. Herbert

visited to add more candles. De-

tectives stopped by in the after-

noon to hand out more fliers to

people gathered at the memorial.

Her friends lingered by the memo-

rial into the evening. One of them

kept a supply of the posters in a

bag, in case they needed to re-

place the ones on the monument.

“We just got out of quarantine.

Everybody had a smile on their

face,” Mr. Branch said. “The fact

that that happened to her don’t

make no sense.”

Joy. Hope.

And Then

A Graduate

Shot Dead.

Ahmad Branch with a placard honoring his friend Tyana Johnson, 19, who died this month in the hospital where she was born.

GREGG VIGLIOTTI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Few leads in the killing

of a teenager hosting a

party at a Bronx park.

Susan C. Beachy contributed re-
search.

By ASHLEY SOUTHALL

and DANIEL E. SLOTNIK

Struggle for Racial JusticeDeadly Violence

ATLANTA — The three white

men accused of killing Ahmaud

Arbery, a black man who was shot

dead after being chased in a South

Georgia neighborhood, have been

indicted on murder charges by a

Georgia grand jury, the prosecu-

tor in the case announced on

Wednesday.

The men — Gregory McMi-

chael, 64; his son Travis McMi-

chael, 34; and their neighbor

William Bryan, 50 — were ar-

rested and charged last month

with murder and other crimes in

connection with Mr. Arbery’s

death, which prompted nation-

wide protests and indignation,

particularly after a graphic video

of his Feb. 23 killing was released

online.

On Wednesday, the office of Dis-

trict Attorney Joyette M. Holmes

of Cobb County announced that a

grand jury in Glynn County had

returned an indictment with nine

counts against each of the three

defendants: malice murder, four

counts of felony murder, two

counts of aggravated assault,

false imprisonment and criminal

attempt to commit false impris-

onment.

The men could face life sen-

tences without parole.

“This is another step forward in

seeking justice for Ahmaud,” Ms.

Holmes said in a statement, add-

ing, “We will continue to be inten-

tional in the pursuit of justice for

this family and the community at

large as the prosecution of this

case continues.”

Mr. Arbery, 25, was spotted in

the Satilla Shores neighborhood,

outside of Brunswick, Ga., while

running on a Sunday afternoon. A

surveillance camera showed that

Mr. Arbery stopped for a few min-

utes inside a house under con-

struction before resuming his jog.

Gregory McMichael later told the

authorities he thought Mr. Arbery

was a suspect in a series of break-

ins in the neighborhood.

He and Travis McMichael

armed themselves, they told the

police, got into a pickup truck, and

tried to catch Mr. Arbery. Mr. Bry-

an, who is known as Roddie, also

gave chase in his vehicle, a state

investigator said, and used his

cellphone to film the killing of Mr.

Arbery.

The video shows Mr. Arbery

running toward a pickup truck

with Travis McMichael standing

next to it. Mr. Arbery tries to run

to the other side of the truck to

avoid Mr. McMichael, who is

armed with a shotgun. But the two

struggle, and Mr. McMichael soon

shoots Mr. Arbery.

In a court hearing this month,

Richard Dial, an investigator with

the Georgia Bureau of Investiga-

tion, said Mr. Bryan heard Mr. Mc-

Michael use a racial slur after

shooting Mr. Arbery.

According to the six-page in-

dictment, which was returned

Wednesday morning, the men are

charged with trying to “unlaw-

fully confine and detain” Mr. Ar-

bery while chasing him, using

their vehicles “offensively” and in

a manner “likely to cause serious

bodily injury.”

The most serious charge is mal-

ice murder, which under Georgia

law is “the intentional killing of a

person with malice of fore-

thought,” said Charlie Bailey, an

Atlanta-area lawyer and former

assistant district attorney in Ful-

ton County, Ga.

Mr. Bailey noted that this mal-

ice did not need to have been de-

veloped over a long period of time.

“Malice can be formed in an in-

stant,” he said.

The shooting death of Mr. Ar-

bery has become an integral part

of the broader wave of protests

against racism, racial profiling

and the police killings of black

people that have broken out

across the country in recent

weeks.

On Tuesday, the State Senate in

Georgia, largely because of Mr.

Arbery’s killing, passed a hate

crimes bill that had been ap-

proved last year by the House.

Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican,

said he would sign it into law

pending a legal review.

Benjamin Crump, one of the

lawyers representing Mr. Ar-

bery’s family, said in a statement

that the indictments confirmed

“what Ahmaud’s father has been

saying for months — that this was

a lynching.”

The three suspects remain in

custody in Glynn County and have

not been arraigned. Lawyers for

the McMichaels could not be

reached on Wednesday afternoon,

but Kevin Gough, a lawyer for Mr.

Bryan, reiterated that his client

was innocent.

“We’re disappointed that the

district attorney chose to indict

Mr. Bryan,” he said. “But at the

same time we’ve been demanding

a speedy trial from Day 1. The pre-

sentation of this case to the grand

jury brings us one step closer to

our day in court.”

Men Accused

Of Murdering

Black Jogger

Are Indicted

By RICHARD FAUSSET

The police chief of Tucson, Ariz.,
abruptly offered to resign on
Wednesday while releasing a vid-
eo in which a 27-year-old Latino
man, Carlos Ingram Lopez, died in
police custody two months ago.
The video, taken by police offi-
cers’ body cameras and not made
public until Wednesday, depicts a

gruesome episode on April 21. Be-

fore his death, Mr. Lopez is seen

handcuffed while pleading repeat-

edly in English and Spanish for

water and for his nana, or grand-

mother.

Chief Chris Magnus said offi-

cers did not use a chokehold on

Mr. Lopez. But he said they vio-

lated training guidelines by re-

straining the victim in a prone po-

sition, face down, for about 12 min-

utes before Mr. Lopez went into

cardiac arrest and died at the

scene. While he was restrained,

Mr. Lopez told the officers he

could not breathe.

The autopsy report said the

cause of death was a combination

of physical restraint and cardiac

arrest involving cocaine intoxica-

tion. Three officers resigned from

the department last Thursday,

Chief Magnus said.

The disclosure of Mr. Lopez’s

death comes at a time when many

Latinos around the United States

are calling for changes in how po-

lice treat their communities, echo-

ing similar calls by African-Amer-

icans. Last week in California, out-

rage emerged over the killing of

Andres Guardado, an 18-year-old

Latino student and security

guard, by a Los Angeles County

sheriff’s deputy. The episode in

Tucson occurred about a month

before George Floyd, a black man,

was killed by a police officer in

Minneapolis, igniting protests

throughout the country.

Mayor Regina Romero of Tuc-

son appeared shaken while dis-

cussing Mr. Lopez’s death at a

news conference on Wednesday.

She spoke in Spanish, offering

condolences to Mr. Lopez’s family,

while expressing indignation in

English over what happened.

“I am deeply troubled and out-

raged,” said Ms. Romero, who is

the first Latina to serve as mayor

of the heavily Latino city. “These

officers would have been termi-

nated had they not resigned.”

Two of the officers who resigned

are white and one is African-

American, said Lane Santa Cruz, a

City Council member who had

been briefed on the episode. The

police chief identified them as

Samuel Routledge, Ryan Star-

buck and Jonathan Jackson.

Chief Magnus’s own offer to re-

sign seemed to catch Ms. Romero,

who was standing by his side, by

surprise. She said she would ex-

amine the details of what hap-

pened before taking action.

The department’s handling of

the issue is now coming under in-

tense scrutiny. Authorities did not

disclose details about Mr. Lopez’s

death until Tuesday, when Ms. Ro-

mero canceled a Council meeting

after watching the video.

Before the release of the video,

Chief Magnus had publicly de-

scribed the Tucson police force as

one of the more progressive de-

partments in the country. It had

previously banned chokeholds

and required officers to partici-

pate in cultural awareness and cri-

sis intervention training.

Chief Magnus said that officers

were responding to a call regard-

ing “disorderly conduct” by Mr.

Lopez, who was unclothed and

seemed to be acting erratically

when the officers arrived at the

scene. At one point, an officer told

Mr. Lopez he would be shocked

with a stun gun if he failed to co-

operate.

In the news conference, Chief

Magnus said he had asked the

F.B.I. to review the episode, which

has been under internal investiga-

tion in the department. He said

the officers involved had not met

the standards established in train-

ing for what he described as a

mental health crisis involving “ex-

cited delirium.”

For years, many departments

have trained officers that people

held face down, in what is known

as “prone restraint,” are more

likely to die suddenly of positional

asphyxia because they have diffi-

culty expanding their chest to

bring in air.

This is particularly true if they

are showing signs of mental dis-

tress or intoxication with stimu-

lant drugs, a condition sometimes

referred to as excited delirium.

Guidelines for such circum-

stances usually call for officers to

move people onto their side or sit

them up as soon as possible.

The autopsy report noted that

Mr. Lopez had been restrained in a

prone position with a spit hood, a

mesh covering that goes over the

head. The officers tried adminis-

tering CPR to revive Mr. Lopez

and also injected him with Nar-

can, a drug used to revive people

overdosing on opioids.

Latino leaders in Tucson ex-

pressed dismay and anguish after

the video was released. Ms. Santa

Cruz, the councilwoman, said the

episode underscored how “we are

disproportionately being killed by

the police.”

She emphasized how desperate

Mr. Lopez had been while being

restrained, calling for his nana.

“In our culture, nanas are the ma-

triarchs,” she said. “He was call-

ing out for his lifeline.”

Tucson Police in Turmoil Over Death of Handcuffed Latino Man

By SIMON ROMERO

Contact the Newsroom:
[email protected]
or call 1-844-NYT-NEWS
(1-844-698-6397).

Editorials:[email protected]

Newspaper Delivery:

[email protected] or call

1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637).

Chief Chris Magnus of the Tucson police offered to resign during

a Wednesday news conference with Mayor Regina Romero.

JOSH GALEMORE/ARIZONA DAILY STAR, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Jennifer Valentino-Devries con-
tributed reporting.