TACOMA — Monèt Carter-Mixon, the sister of Manuel Ellis, testified Thursday in the trial of three Tacoma police officers charged with killing him — a proceeding that may not have happened but for the evidence she found in her quest to challenge the official narrative and call attention to his death.
Beginning the morning after Ellis died, Carter-Mixon pressed for answers about what happened March 3, 2020, the night her brother died, she testified. Police had described Ellis as the aggressor, but that strayed wildly from the brother she’d known in the months preceding his death.
She ultimately helped unearth eyewitness videos that showed officers violently restraining Ellis as he gasped, “I can’t breathe, sir,” and that became critical evidence in the charges against officers Matthew Collins, 40; Christopher “Shane” Burbank, 38; and Timothy Rankine, 34.
Burbank and Collins are standing trial in Pierce County Superior Court for second-degree murder. All three are charged with first-degree manslaughter, and have pleaded not guilty. They remain employed on paid leave.
“He was my person,” Carter-Mixon testified Thursday, after hobbling to the witness stand using a walker due to complications from the birth of her seventh child.
She said Ellis stayed with her off and on during the last five years of his life and helped care for the children she was raising on her own up to the time of his death. “He was staying with me and didn’t have much to offer but the help, but I really needed it,” Carter-Mixon said.
He’d been regularly attending church, getting steady support and medication for his mental illness and, according to court records, had stayed off drugs while living at a sober living home, a condition of his release for a pending attempted robbery case from September 2019.
“He was happy. He was normal,” she testified. “He was like my typical funny brother who makes me laugh and makes the kids laugh and wasn’t a concern.”
Ellis, 33, died of oxygen deprivation from physical restraint, according to the Pierce County medical examiner. His death was ruled a homicide, but the high level of methamphetamine in Ellis’ system could have been lethal, the medical examiner noted.
Defense lawyers for the three officers have seized on that fact as an alternate reason for his death, and peppered Carter-Mixon with questions about his drug use.
Ellis had been open with his sister about his struggles with methamphetamine since his late teens or early 20s, and a few years before he died, Ellis was diagnosed with depression and schizophrenia.
“I wasn’t concerned about his behavior if he was high or had a meth addiction because of the way he acted around us,” Carter-Mixon said. “He didn’t scare my children, he didn’t scare me and he wasn’t violent with anyone. He was a joy to be around.”
Ellis’ family warned him in the final months of his life that they were worried his involvement with drugs was a threat to his life, Carter-Mixon said under questioning from special prosecutor Patty Eakes. She said she kicked him out when she learned he’d relapsed.
“My rule with Manny, this last go-round with me, was he would have to go to some form of sober living and live with people he could relate with and get more help,” Carter-Mixon testified.
Her quest to find answers about his death began with a phone call from the Medical Examiner’s Office notifying her of her brother’s death. It offered few details, so that day, she began scouring the internet for anything about a Black man dying in Tacoma police custody.
She found a website that cribs audio from police radio channels, she testified. It’s where she first recognized her brother’s voice in the background of an open radio call saying, “I can’t breathe,” Carter-Mixon previously told The Seattle Times.
Next, she talked with a clerk at the 7-Eleven store her brother frequented. Then she set about seeking potential witnesses, posting messages on social media and speaking with the news media.
Months passed with little progress, until protests over George Floyd’s death erupted. Carter-Mixon attended a protest in Tacoma with a bullhorn, begging for anyone who knew more about her brother’s death to come forward. Around that time, The (Tacoma) News Tribune published a story in early June 2020 revealing that Ellis’ death had been ruled a homicide.
By then, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, which initially investigated the case, had released statements denying Ellis was choked or struck, and suggested his death may have been from “excited delirium,” a term for sudden death in the presence of police that the American Medical Association disputes.
On the morning of June 4, 2020, Carter-Mixon got a message on social media from Sara McDowell: “I read about your brother last night. Was there the night of.” McDowell said she had video of the police and Ellis.
“You’re really gonna want the video,” McDowell wrote. “The information the cops gave and that’s everywhere is a lie.”
That video showed officers violently taking Ellis to the ground and striking him. Soon other videos emerged: from a passing pizza delivery driver, a woman who lives near the scene where Ellis died and a home exterior surveillance camera.
Earlier Thursday, the third day of trial, two of those videos were the focus of testimony from Grant Fredericks, a prosecution expert in forensic video analysis.
He testified that the pizza driver’s video showed Ellis appearing to raise his hands as Collins choked him from behind and Burbank unleashed three, five-second Taser blasts to Ellis’ chest in a span of less than a minute.
During opening statements, the prosecution described Ellis’ gesture as hands-up in surrender. Defense lawyers focused on what the videos didn’t show.
Fredericks, under cross-examination from defense lawyers, conceded that the videos did not capture the start of the struggle between Ellis and the officers. What initiated that confrontation — unnecessary violence from officers, or Ellis’ own actions — remains in dispute, and likely will be the focus of future testimony.
Jurors were excused for the week at the conclusion of Thursday’s testimony. Testimony is scheduled to resume in Pierce County Superior Court Judge Bryan Chushcoff’s courtroom on Monday, when the prosecution is expected to call Ellis’ mother, Marcia Carter-Patterson.
