MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Tyre Nichols screamed for his mother while Memphis police beat him after a traffic stop on Jan. 7, 2023, about a block from where he lived with his parents. The 29-year-old died in a hospital three days later.
In an analysis of what the officers claimed happened on that night, The Associated Press sifted through hundreds of pages of evidence and hours of video from the scene, including officer body cameras. The cameras showed a starkly different scene to that described by the officers.
More than a year and a half after Nichols' death, three former officers are facing a federal criminal trial over the deadly pummeling. That’s in addition to allegations that they offered essentially no help as he slumped on a patrol car and onto the pavement, and claims that they lied or left out critical information to protect themselves from repercussions.
Two other former officers have pleaded guilty and could testify against the remaining three.
The trial will heighten attention on a case that sparked outrage around the world and intensified calls for police reform in the city and the U.S. as a whole.
The three officers have also been charged with second-degree murder in state court, where the other two former officers, Desmond Mills and Emmitt Martin, plan to plead guilty, like they have in federal court. The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the Memphis Police Department and Nichols' family has sued the city over his death.
Here is an analysis of how the officers' claims in reports at the time stack up with what video footage shows during four key moments.
Memphis police officers Demetrius Haley, Preston Hemphill and Martin were the first three to encounter Nichols after pulling him over for what they said was reckless driving.
Haley wrote in his response to resistance form that Nichols “ignored all directives” to get out of the car. He wrote Nichols was “swinging his arms” and cursing at the officers. Martin's report claimed Nichols was reaching for one of the officers’ guns.
Footage from police body-worn camera shows the officers immediately yanked Nichols from the vehicle. The officers are swearing, shouting and threatening to shock Nichols with a Taser.
The video shows Nichols being forced onto his knees, while he tries to calmly tell the officers, “I am on the ground.” Nichols is then physically overpowered by the three officers who are using a Taser and pepper spray on him.
Additional Memphis officers Tadarrius Bean and Justin Smith joined the fray after Nichols fled and was caught just blocks from his parents’ home.
Haley, Bean and Smith all described in their response to resistance forms that the officers used “soft hands” techniques to subdue Nichols — Haley during the traffic stop, and Bean and Smith at the scene of the beating.
“Soft hands” is a technique described in Memphis police guidelines as “escort controls, touch pressure points, wrist or arm locks and take down techniques that have a minimum chance of injury.”
The incident report only mentions that officers used chemical agents and a baton against Nichols, omitting the kicks, punches and slaps while his arms were held or restrained.
Multiple videos show an almost three-minute barrage of fists, feet and baton strikes to Nichols’ face, head, front and back as officers restrain him.
Bean, Haley and Smith are charged with acting with “deliberate indifference” while Nichols was on the ground, struggling with his injuries. The indictment, which lodges a number of charges, says the officers “willfully” disregarded Nichols’ medical needs by failing to give him medical care and not telling a police dispatcher and emergency medical personnel that Nichols had been hit repeatedly.
Bean, Haley and Smith have pleaded not guilty.
Smith’s body-worn camera captured him and another officer exchanging a high five steps away from Nichols. On the aerial video, two officers are seen fist-bumping each other.
Meanwhile, Nichols appears to be falling out of consciousness, slumping over and not responding when officers try to pull him upright again.
On body-worn camera from Bean, the officers brag about the assault and laugh, and they speculate that Nichols is high. Nichols’ autopsy later detected only low levels of alcohol and THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in his system.
On Mills’ body camera, Lt. Dewayne Smith and Mills go to Nichols’ home where he lives with his parents, just blocks from where he is laying bleeding. His parents ask what Nichols is in custody for.
Lt. Smith tells them he was arrested for a DUI and that Nichols was “intoxicated.”
In another interaction, Hemphill tells Nichols’ mother that he fought with officers and another officer tells her that he had “unbelievable strength.” Smith, the former lieutenant, resigned in lieu of being fired, and Hemphill was fired. Neither face criminal charges.
Hemphill later talks to Nichols’ parents at the scene of the initial traffic stop, where his mother, RowVaughn Wells, shares comments of disbelief.
"My son? My son? Not Tyre," Wells said.
Mattise reported from Nashville, Tennessee.
FILE - The image from video released on Jan. 27, 2023, by the City of Memphis, shows Tyre Nichols during a brutal attack by five Memphis police officers on Jan. 7, 2023, in Memphis, Tenn. (City of Memphis via AP, File)
FILE - RowVaughn Wells rests on her husband's shoulder Rodney Wells, the parents of Tyre Nichols, during a news conference after a former Memphis Police Department officer pleaded guilty to civil rights violations in the 2023 fatal beating of their son, Aug. 23, 2024, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)
FILE - This combo of images provided by the Memphis, Tenn., Police Department shows, top row from left, officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, and bottom row from left, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith. (Memphis Police Department via AP, File)
FILE - The screen at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans honors Tyre Nichols before an NBA basketball game between the New Orleans Pelicans and the Washington Wizards, Jan. 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton, File)
Donald Trump began his first day as the 47th president of the United States with a dizzying display of force, signing a blizzard of executive orders that signaled his desire to remake American institutions while also pardoning nearly all of his supporters who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Here's the latest:
He pledged to remove more than 1,000 presidential appointees “who are not aligned with our vision.”
In a post on his TruthSocial platform, Trump dismissed chef and humanitarian Jose Andres from the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, Ret. Gen. Mark Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, former State Dept. official Brian Hook from the board of the Wilson Center, and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms from the President’s Export Council.
“YOUR’E FIRED!” he wrote in a post just after midnight Tuesday.
Milley, the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under Trump, received a pardon from former President Joe Biden on Monday over concerns he could be criminally targeted by the new administration. His portrait in the Pentagon was also removed. Hook, who was Trump’s Iran envoy during his first term, had been involved in the Trump administration transition. No reasoning was given for his firing.
Former President Joe Biden also removed many Trump appointees in his first days in office, including former press secretary Sean Spicer from the board overseeing the U.S. Naval Acadamy.
Rep. Elise Stefanik is likely to face questions at her confirmation hearing Tuesday to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations about her lack of foreign policy experience, her strong support for Israel and her views on funding the U.N. and its many agencies.
Harvard-educated and the fourth-ranking member of the U.S. House, she was elected to Congress in 2015 as a moderate Republican and is leaving a decade later as one of President Trump’s most ardent allies.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “looks forward to working again with President Trump on his second term,” U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Monday.
When she appears before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Stefanik is likely to be grilled about her views on the wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere as well as the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs — all issues on the U.N. agenda.
▶ Read more about Elise Stefanik’s confirmation hearing
Scholz said at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday that “not every press conference in Washington, not every tweet should send us straight into excited, existential debates. That’s also the case after the change of government that took place in Washington yesterday.”
Scholz said the U.S. is Germany’s closest ally outside Europe and he’ll do everything to keep in that way.
He acknowledged that Trump and his administration “will keep the world on tenterhooks in the coming years” in energy, climate, trade and security policy. But he said “we can and will deal with all this, without unnecessary agitation and outrage, but also without false ingratiation or telling people what they want to hear.”
Scholz said of Trump’s “America First” approach that there’s nothing wrong with looking to the interests of one’s own country – “we all do that. But it is also the case that cooperation and agreement with others are mostly also in one’s interest.”
Speaking in the Oval Office Monday, Trump rejected Biden’s warning that the U.S. is becoming an “ oligarchy ” for tech billionaires, saying the executives supported Democrats until they realized Biden “didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.”
“They did desert him,” Trump added. “They were all with him, every one of them, and now they are all with me.”
Despite taking millions from the executives and their companies for his inaugural committee — and receiving more than $200 million in assistance from Musk in his presidential campaign — Trump claimed he didn’t need their money and they wouldn’t be receiving anything in return.
“They’re not going to get anything from me,” Trump said. “I don’t need money, but I do want the nation to do well, and they’re smart people and they create a lot of jobs.”
Some of the most exclusive seats at Trump’s inauguration on Monday were reserved for powerful tech CEOs who also happen to be among the world’s richest men.
That’s a shift from tradition, especially for a president who has characterized himself as a champion of the working class. Seats so close to the president are usually reserved for the president’s family, past presidents and other honored guests.
The mega-rich have long had a prominent role in national politics, and several billionaires helped bankroll the campaign of Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
But the inaugural display highlights the unusually direct role the world’s wealthiest people will likely have in the new administration. In his outgoing address, Biden warned that the U.S. was becoming an oligarchy of tech billionaires wielding dangerous levels of power and influence on the nation.
▶ Read more about the billionaires at Trump’s inauguration
Outside the National Cathedral, just a few hours before the Interfaith Service of Prayer for the Nation, which both President Trump and Vice President JD Vance are expected to attend, the scene before was decidedly quiet.
At the Cathedral only a few dog walkers dotted the sidewalk and the police presence was low.
It was a far cry from yesterday when thousands lined up in downtown D.C. festooned in the red regalia of MAGA nation — or the security and foot traffic from earlier this month for the funeral service of former President Jimmy Carter where Secret Service vehicles could be seen at least a mile from the Cathedral.
The Senate quickly confirmed Marco Rubio as secretary of state Monday, voting unanimously to give Trump the first member of his new Cabinet on Inauguration Day.
Rubio, the Republican senator from Florida, is among the least controversial of Trump’s nominees and vote was decisive, 99-0.
It’s often tradition for the Senate to convene immediately after the ceremonial pomp of the inauguration to begin putting the new president’s team in place, particularly the national security officials.
▶ Read more about Marco Rubio’s confirmation
All the living former presidents were there and the outgoing president amicably greeted his successor, who gave a speech about the country’s bright future and who left to the blare of a brass band.
At first glance, President Donald Trump’ssecond inauguration seemed like a continuation of the country’s nearly 250-year-long tradition of peaceful transfers of power, essential to its democracy. And there was much to celebrate: Trump won a free and fair election last fall, and his supporters hope he will be able to fix problems at the border, end the war in Ukraine and get inflation under control.
Still, on Monday, the warning signs were clear.
Due to frigid temperatures, Trump’s swearing-in was held in the Capitol Rotunda, where rioters seeking to keep him in power the last time roamed during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. Trump walked into the space from the hall leading to the building’s west front tunnel, where some of the worst hand-to-hand combat between Trump supporters and police occurred that day.
After giving a speech pledging that “never again” would the government “persecute political opponents,” Trump then gave a second, impromptu address to a crowd of supporters. The president lamented that his inaugural address had been sanitized, said he would shortly pardon the Jan. 6 rioters and fumed at last-minute preemptive pardons issued by outgoing President Joe Biden to the members of the congressional committee that investigated the attack.
▶ Read more about Trump’s Inauguration Day
President Donald Trump signs an executive order to create the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, as White House staff secretary Will Scharf watches. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Donald Trump speaks as first lady Melania Trump listens at the Commander in Chief Ball, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump signs an executive order on TikTok in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)