Dr. Loretta Prater and Rev. David Prater with picture of their son. Click to enlarge.
photo by John Wilson
The family of Leslie Vaughn Prater said Monday that his death in police custody was unnecessary and part of a pattern of police brutality in Chattanooga.
His mother, Dr. Loretta Prater, said, "Leslie loved life. He was always smiling and happy. He was not trying to fight the police. He was only trying to live."
John Wolfe, attorney for the Prater family, said a state autopsy found that asphyxiation contributed to the death of the 37-year-old man on Central Avenue on Jan. 2.
He said the autopsy by state medical examiner Dr. Bruce Levy showed the victim had six broken ribs and a broken left arm.
Police said they responded to a report of a naked man out in the street, and they said they had to restrain Mr. Prater.
Dr. Prater, who is a dean at Southwest Missouri College, said the four officers involved in the case should still be on leave. The officers - Daniel Anderson, Johnathan Mance, Gregory Chambers and Keith Hudgins - were on paid administrative leave, then went back on the job.
She said the case should be expedited, but police officials said it will take 6-12 months to investigate.
Dr. Prater said Chattanooga "is a valley of death for many unarmed citizens, especially African-American males." She said the city is #1 for police brutality in citizens of 200,000 or less and #7 overall.
She said, "This is not a place of prominence that citizens should embrace with pride."
Dr. Prater said city police still use pepper spray and hogtying techniques. She said at least 70 people in the U.S. have died due to pepper spray. She said hogtying can lead to death by positional asphyxia.
She said, "We would challenge all police officers to treat all citizens the way they would like to be treated, and the way they would like their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters to be treated."
Attorney Wolfe said the family paid $2,000 to have the separate autopsy done.
He said, "This kind of incident has happened way too often in this city over the last 40 years."
Dr. Prater said her son had some drug problems in prior years, but attorney Wolfe said a report showed no drugs in his system at the time of his death.
She said initial statements were that no officer maced her son, but she said as it turned out that two officers used pepper spray on him.
Dr. Prater said she is "as surprised as anybody" that he was naked in the street, saying that "is not acceptable conduct."
She said she was "not playing the black card," but she said there were so many instances involving loss of lives of blacks at the hands of white police officers in Chattanooga that "the black cards are there."