TACOMA, Wash. — Editor's note: This is a live, unedited feed. Viewer discretion is advised.
Two witnesses who saw the confrontation between two Tacoma police officers and Manuel Ellis on the night Ellis died, testified on Tuesday in the trial over his death.
Ellis died on March 3, 2020, after the confrontation with the two officers, Christopher Burbank and Matthew Collins.
Burbank and Collins are charged with second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter. Officer Timothy Rankine, who played a role in restraining Ellis later on in the confrontation, is charged with first-degree manslaughter.
One of the witnesses, Sara McDowell, recorded video of the incident.
She testified Manuel Ellis "wasn't doing anything" when she saw an officer knock Ellis down with the front passenger-side door of a patrol car.
”It wasn’t right. I’ve never seen that happen before," McDowell told jurors. "I’ve never seen a cop do that to anybody, so it was like the worst thing I had ever seen. It was scary. It wasn’t OK.”
Video of the confrontation between Burbank, Collins and Ellis is expected to factor heavily into the state's case. The state is relying on three different videos taken by witnesses to argue to the jury that Ellis did not fight back against police as they restrained him at the intersection of Ainsworth Avenue South and South 96th Street.
Keyon Lowery, who was behind McDowell at the intersection that night, was the first witness to testify on Tuesday.
Lowery and McDowell were stopped behind Burbank and Collins' patrol car at the intersection where the confrontation took place on the night Ellis died.
On the stand, Lowery said he noticed Ellis walking down the sidewalk, but didn't notice anything out of the ordinary about his demeanor.
"He was just taking a stroll," Lowery said.
Lowery testified that he saw Ellis walk toward the police car, and said it seemed like Ellis had been called over by someone in the car. Lowery said he saw Ellis get knocked down by the passenger-side door of the patrol car. Lowery said he saw the officer on the passenger side get out and try to restrain Ellis as he was on the ground. That's when Lowery said he saw the officer swing at Ellis two or three times.
Lowery said did not see any behavior from Ellis that seemed threatening or aggressive.
As the officer restrained Ellis on the ground, Lowery said he did not see Ellis fight back. Lowery said the officer sitting in the driver's side of the vehicle then came around the front of the car and joined the other officer in restraining Ellis.
Lowery said he got out of his car and yelled at officers that "they were in the wrong." He said he felt the urge to help Ellis after seeing the way officers were treating him.
McDowell, who had also gotten out of her car, told Lowery to return to his vehicle, as the pair's children were in his car. Lowery said as he drove away from the intersection that he noticed Ellis was still on the ground with the two officers still restraining him.
Defense counsel attempted to cast doubt on Lowery's and McDowell's recollection of events by pointing out discrepancies between what they said on the stand Tuesday and what they had previously told investigators in the aftermath of the confrontation.
McDowell said it first appeared Ellis and the officers may have been friends when he first approached the car and that she thought maybe the officers knew him or were asking Ellis how he was doing.
After a brief interaction, McDowell said Ellis turned around as an officer opened the car door, knocking Ellis to his knees on the ground. She then testified that the officer driving the car turned on the caution lights, got out of the vehicle and ran around to the side Ellis was on before picking up Ellis and body-slamming him to the ground.
That’s when she began recording the incident with her cell phone.
“What I had seen scared me and I didn’t see any need for it, so I wanted to make sure that whatever happened was on tape,” she testified.
She testified that after he was on his back on the ground, the officer from the passenger side of the vehicle got out and began punching Ellis in the face “over and over” about eight to 10 times.
“I never seen him fight back … When I seen him at the end he seemed, like, out of breath, like he said ‘help,’ from what I heard,” she testified about Ellis. “To me, I assumed he was just out of breath, tired, had gotten beat.”
McDowell said she never saw Ellis strike the police vehicle, assault either officer and did not fight back when the officers were hitting him.
Two exhibits related to the incident were shown in court, though the visual was not shared and the audio for the duration of these exhibits was muted by request of the prosecution.
McDowell said in June 2020 she came across a news article about the March 3 incident and that it was inaccurate compared to what she had seen. She sought out Ellis’ sister Monet Carter-Mixon, who she contacted and sent the videos to.
She decided not to send the video to police because "they’re the ones that did it,” McDowell testified. “I wanted to find his family and let them do what they thought was best.”
The defense argued that McDowell’s testimony on Tuesday about the sequence of events greatly differs from what she told the defense counsel in January of this year, along with two other details of her recollection.
The first point of difference was the sequence of events for which the officer had physical contact with Ellis first. In court, McDowell maintained that the officer driving the car was the first to physically contact Ellis, followed by the officer on the passenger side. Her January statements are the opposite, according to the defense.
McDowell was shown one message she wrote to someone about the incident that said “Wait till I’m in the stands I’m lying to shut you all down.” But, McDowell testifies that it was a typo that she meant to type “dying to shut you all down” and that she had no intent to lie on the witness stand.
The defense questioned McDowell on her January statements about the direction Ellis was walking before coming in contact with the officers. In court, she said Ellis was walking toward the police car and her car, whereas her prior statement said he was not walking toward the cars.
McDowell said she was scared and upset when she first started recording, which is why she threatens Lowery and swears at him in the incident video.
The testimony of Lowery, McDowell and another bystander to the initial confrontation, Seth Cowden, is central to the prosecution's argument that Ellis was not threatening officers. The defense claimed Ellis was behaving erratically due to a potentially fatal dose of methamphetamine in his system. Officers claim Ellis threw one of them to the ground and displayed "superhuman strength" as the officers tried to gain control of him.
The trial is expected to last between eight and 12 weeks. Jury deliberations are anticipated to begin Dec. 4.
Background on the case
On March 3, 2020, Ellis was walking home when he stopped to speak with Tacoma Police Officers Burbank and Collins, who were in their patrol car, according to probable cause documents.
Witnesses said Ellis turned to walk away, but the officers got out of their car and knocked Ellis to his knees. All witnesses told investigators they did not see Ellis strike the officers.
Other responding officers told investigators that Burbank and Collins reported Ellis was “goin’ after a car” in the intersection and punched the patrol car's windows.
Witness video shows officers repeatedly hitting Ellis. Collins put Ellis into a neck restraint, and Burbank tasered Ellis’ chest, according to prosecutors.
Home security camera footage captured Ellis saying, “Can’t breathe, sir. Can’t breathe."
Rankine, who was the first backup officer to arrive, applied pressure to Ellis' back and held him in place while Ellis was "hogtied" with a hobble, according to documents.
When the fire department arrived, Ellis was “unconscious and unresponsive,” according to documents.
The Pierce County Medical Examiner ruled Ellis' death a homicide. According to the autopsy report, Ellis had a fatal amount of methamphetamine in his system.
KING 5 will stream gavel-to-gavel coverage of the trial from opening to closing statements. Follow live coverage and watch videos on demand on king5.com, KING 5+ and the KING 5 YouTube channel.