Hotel workers charged in death of Black man in Milwaukee

According to a criminal complaint, the four employees dragged Mitchell out of the Hyatt Hotel on June 30 after Mitchell entered a woman's bathroom and held him on his stomach for eight or nine minutes.

By Todd Richmond | Associated Press

Prosecutors charged four Milwaukee hotel employees Tuesday with being a party to felony murder in connection with D’Vontaye Mitchell’s death.

The incident has drawn comparisons to the murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died in 2020 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into his neck for about nine minutes. Floyd’s death sparked a national reckoning on race relations marked by multiple protests around the country.

According to a criminal complaint, the four employees dragged Mitchell out of the Hyatt Hotel on June 30 after Mitchell entered a woman’s bathroom and held him on his stomach for eight or nine minutes. One of the employees told investigators that Mitchell was having trouble breathing and repeatedly pleaded for help, according to the complaint.

An autopsy showed that Mitchell suffered from morbid obesity and had ingested cocaine and methamphetamine, the complaint said.

Reached by telephone Tuesday evening, one of the employees, security guard Todd Erickson, referred questions to his attorney, Michael Steinle, who did not immediately return voicemail and email messages seeking comment. It was unclear if the other three employees had attorneys. Online court records didn’t list any for them Tuesday evening.

The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office said in a news release that arrest warrants had been issued for all four employees. The office and the Milwaukee Police Department did not immediately respond to emails inquiring if the employees had been arrested or had attorneys.

According to the criminal complaint, Hyatt surveillance video shows Mitchell frantically running into the hotel’s lobby and then into the gift shop before entering the women’s bathroom. A few seconds later, a woman emerges and an off-duty hotel security guard who happened to be visiting staff at that moment drags Mitchell out of the bathroom into the lobby by his shirt.

The two begin to struggle, and the guard punches Mitchell, knocking him to the floor. The guard then punches Mitchell six times and drags him out of the hotel with the help of a bystander. Mitchell gets up and tries to go back inside.

A bellhop, a front desk worker and Erickson, who was on duty, then join the fray, and together they hold Mitchell down on his stomach for eight to nine minutes before police and emergency responders arrive. The video shows that during that span, Mitchell tries to break free multiple times, and Erickson hits him with a baton before he eventually stops moving, according to the complaint.

A video taken by a witness includes audio of Mitchell moaning and saying he is sorry. An autopsy found that Mitchell was morbidly obese and had cocaine and methamphetamine in his system.

The county medical examiner ultimately determined that Mitchell died of “restraint asphyxia.” He may have lived if the employees allowed him to turn onto his side, the medical examiner said, according to the complaint.

Erickson told investigators that Mitchell was very strong and kept resisting them and tried to bite him. But the guard said he never did anything to intentionally hurt or harm Mitchell.

The off-duty security guard said that he heard women screaming in the bathroom after Mitchell entered it, and he thought Mitchell was on drugs. At one point, he moved Mitchell’s clothing off his face, he said.

The front-desk worker told investigators that Mitchell was not in a “stable sort of mind,” and he was speaking “gibberish,” the complaint said.

He said he remembered Mitchell saying something about breathing while he was being held down but couldn’t remember exactly what. He told the bellhop to stop applying pressure, which he did. The front desk worker said that Mitchell displayed “clear signs of extreme distress, including gags, distressed breathing and repeated pleas for help,” according to the complaint.

The complaint concludes that the four employees had to have known Mitchell was in distress. “All of these factors, the gasping, the actions and words of DM, the distress that he was in, show that all four Defendants were aware that holding DM face first on the ground was ‘practically certain’ to cause impairment of his physical condition,” the complaint says.

Mitchell’s relatives and their lawyers had previously reviewed hotel surveillance video provided by the district attorney’s office. They described seeing Mitchell being chased inside the hotel by security guards and then dragged outside, where he was beaten.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is part of a team of lawyers representing Mitchell’s family, has said video recorded by a bystander and circulating on social media shows security guards with their knees on Mitchell’s back and neck.

Aimbridge Hospitality, the company that manages the hotel, said previously that several employees involved in Mitchell’s death have been fired. The company’s media representatives didn’t immediately return email and phone messages Tuesday evening.