Mother of Tyre Nichols Breaks Down Recalling Learning He’d Been Beaten Just Feet From Her Home and Called Out For Her

RowVaughn Wells, the mother of Tyre Nichols who was beaten to death by police in Memphis, addressed the public on Friday in heart-wrenching remarks recalling how her son called out for her after the beating.

Nichols, a 29-year-old FedEx worker and father, was pulled over on January 7th and beaten by police for 3 minutes in an encounter that was caught on tape. Nichols’s attorneys and family viewed the tape on Monday. Ben Crump, an attorney also addressed the public on Friday and said Nichols was treated like “a human piñata” in a “savage” beating he likened to the 1991 police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles. The five police officers involved in the beating have been fired and charged with murder.

“I just want to ask for prayer from my family, from this whole community. And I want to say to the five police officers that murdered my son. You also disgraced your own families when you did this. But you know what? I’m going to pray for you and your families, because at the end of the day, this shouldn’t have happened,” Wells began.

“This just shouldn’t have happened. And we want justice for my son. Justice for my son,” she added, choking back tears.

Those gathered then began to chant, “Justice for Tyre.”

“I just want to thank everybody again for coming. I don’t have, I have a lot of words that I want to say, but they’re just not coming out right now. And I still haven’t had time to grieve. I’m still dealing with the death of my son. This is, this was not supposed to happen. My son was supposed to be with me today. I always know that I’ll always be with him. As I told everyone, he has a tattoo of my name on his arm. My son loved me to death. And I love him to death and so this is very difficult for me. I’m sorry if I’m not articulating myself a little bit better,” Well continued.

“Oh, you’re doing fine,” said Crump.

“No mother, no mother. No mother should go through what I’m going through right now. No mother to lose their child to the violent way that I lost my child. Thank you,” Wells concluded before taking some questions.

A reporter then asked Wells what she understood her son was saying on the tape, calling out for help after the beating.

“My heart just breaks for a mother to know that their child was calling to them in their need. And I wasn’t there for you, did you? Do you know how I feel right now? Because I wasn’t there for my son,” she replied.

“I told, I was telling someone that I had this really bad pain in my stomach earlier, not knowing what had happened. But once I found out what happened, that was my son’s pain that I was feeling and I didn’t even know. But for me to find out that my son was calling my name that was only feet away, but did not even hear him. You have no clue how I feel right there. No clue,” Wells concluded crying as Crump asked further questions be directed to him.