MONROE, La. — “He was spitting blood everywhere, and all of a sudden, he just went limp.”
Those words, spoken by a Louisiana state trooper, are part of a damning audio clip The Associated Press has obtained in which the trooper, who himself has since died, spoke bluntly about the alleged fatal beating he inflicted on Ronald Greene following a chase in May 2019.
“I beat the ever-living f--- out of him, choked him and everything else trying to get him under control,” Master Trooper Chris Hollingsworth says in the clip, which was posted on Twitter by Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney representing Greene’s family.
“The brutality used against (Greene), that was not what his family was told,” Merritt told The New York Times last month. “It appears that Mr. Greene was sat upon by several officers who tased him repeatedly and beat him before he entered cardiac arrest.”
Greene’s May 10 death, which Louisiana State Police officials attributed to a car crash, has come under renewed scrutiny after his family and social justice advocates, including the head of the Baton Rouge chapter of the NAACP, last month released graphic post-mortem photos of his battered face and head. They also released an image of his car, which appeared to have minimal damage inconsistent with his injuries and the reported cause of his death.
Federal authorities are now investigating the 49-year-old’s death. Greene’s family filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit in May accusing troopers and Union Parish sheriff’s deputies of leaving Greene “beaten, bloodied and in cardiac arrest” following the traffic stop. It also accuses them of covering up the real cause of his death.
Click here to see the photos of Ronald Greene. Warning: The images are graphic in nature.
According to the lawsuit, an autopsy found “multiple signs of recent trauma, blunt force injuries to the head and face, facial lacerations, facial abrasions, facial contusions, scalp lacerations, blunt force injuries to the extremities and abrasions and contusions over the left and right knees.”
The autopsy also showed Greene had neither drugs nor alcohol in his system, though authorities had initially said he was intoxicated at the time of his death.
The AP on Thursday described the 27-second audio clip from Hollingsworth’s body-worn camera — the footage of which has been withheld by state police officials — as the most direct evidence yet of the beating Greene suffered.
Hollingsworth died Sept. 22, one day after crashing his personal vehicle on Interstate 20 near Monroe. According to an AP report, the crash occurred hours after Hollingsworth learned that he would be fired for his role in Greene’s death.
Hollingsworth had been placed on administrative leave prior to his fatal crash, the Times reported.
The trooper was buried quietly last Friday, reportedly out of fear his funeral would attract demonstrators protesting Greene’s death.
In the audio recording, Hollingsworth can be heard talking about beating and choking Greene. The AP reported that the audio appeared to be the trooper’s side of a phone call with a colleague.
“We finally got him in handcuffs when a third man got there, and the son of a b----- was still fighting,” Hollingsworth says in the clip. “They were still wrestling with him, trying to hold him down.”
That was when Hollingsworth said Greene, who was spitting blood, went limp.
Listen to the audio in the tweet below. Warning: The tweet contains explicit language and graphic images.
His name was #RonaldGreene. His family was told by Lousiana State Troopers he died in a car accident. He was beat, choked and tased to death. No use of force was mentioned in the police report. pic.twitter.com/HDRREqqeku
— S. Lee Merritt, Esq. (@MeritLaw) October 1, 2020
“It is shocking that this evidence has been withheld for over a year,” Merritt told the AP.
He called on Louisiana State Police officials to release all body camera footage from the day of Greene’s death.
Eugene Collins, president of the Baton Rouge chapter of the NAACP, called Hollingsworth’s comments “disgusting and morally bankrupt.” He also said the recording raised new questions about how law enforcement handled Greene’s death.
“How far did this cover-up go?” Collins asked in an AP interview.
He urged Gov. John Bel Edwards to take “swift and aggressive action.”
Greene’s family was initially told that he’d died in a car crash when his silver Toyota C-HR struck a shrub or tree at the end of a long police chase, according to the AP. A state trooper had attempted to stop Greene on U.S. 80 for an unspecified traffic violation.
The one-page crash report has no reference to a struggle or an arrest, the Times reported.
Authorities later acknowledged that there had been a struggle between Greene and the troopers and deputies involved in the chase.
The lawsuit names seven troopers and deputies who showed up at the scene of the chase and crash, which caused minor damage and from which Greene was able to walk away. Despite his apologies for failing to immediately stop his car, the law enforcement officers “individually and in concert used lethal force” against him, the suit states.
Along with being beaten, Greene was shocked with a Taser at least three times, according to the civil complaint.
An ambulance was called to the scene at 12:29 a.m. When paramedics arrived 22 minutes later, they found an unresponsive Greene “propped up against an officer’s leg, covered in blood with multiple Taser barbs penetrating his body,” the document states.
Greene was pronounced dead at 1:27 a.m. at Glenwood Medical Center. The initial report from the hospital listed the cause of death as cardiac arrest. It also noted an “unspecified injury of head.”
Read the entire lawsuit below.
The lawsuit alleges that state police officials “immediately began efforts to obfuscate the true nature of the conduct that caused Greene’s death.”
According to the family’s lawyers, one officer told Greene’s mother he was killed immediately after striking a tree. The call for paramedics concealed the fact that force had been used on Greene, and the sole police report on the incident does not indicate what officers did.
An emergency room doctor at Glenwood confirmed the deception, the suit alleges.
“Upon obtaining more history from different law enforcement personnel, history seems to be disjointed and does not add up,” the doctor stated, according to the complaint. “Different versions are present.”
Despite telling Greene’s family that he was killed on impact, “law enforcement state to me that patient got out of the car and was running and involved in a fight and struggle with them where he was tased three times.”
The lawsuit seeks $1 million in damages.
Cox Media Group
