Where were Manuel Ellis’ hands during deadly encounter with Tacoma cops? Expert testifies
Witness testimony continued Wednesday morning in the trial of three Tacoma police officers charged in Pierce County Superior Court with the in-custody death of a Black man.
Manuel Ellis, 33, died on a street corner in Tacoma’s South End after encountering police the night of March 3, 2020. Prosecutors with the Washington Attorney General’s Office have said officers attacked and restrained him without justification, and defense attorneys say the officers were simply responding after Ellis attacked their patrol car.
Matthew Collins, 40, Christopher “Shane” Burbank, 38 and Timothy Rankine, 34, remain employed by the Tacoma Police Department on paid leave while they’re on trial. Collins and Burbank are charged with second-degree murder; all three officers are charged with first-degree manslaughter. They have all pleaded not guilty.
Assistant attorney general Lori Nicolavo questioned forensic video analyst Grant Fredericks about how he authenticated the videos of three eyewitnesses and a doorbell security camera, and then showed jurors an image-by-image reproduction of video taken by a delivery driver who happened upon the scene when officers were grappling with Ellis.
Nicolavo repeatedly asked about the locations of Ellis’ hands and the movements of Burbank and Collins while the images were displayed on courtroom televisions. Fredericks noted two occasions when Ellis’ palms were facing the police and above his head, for just one second while Collins brought him to the ground and Burbank trained his Taser on him, and again when Burbank shocked Ellis with the device.
Fredericks, a certified forensic video analyst for a company in Spokane, according to court records, testified that he had magnified and stabilized the video to focus on the movement of Ellis’ hands and the bodies of the officers. Fredericks said it also helped him see the Taser activations.
Earlier in the morning, Fredericks told jurors how he analyzed data from Ellis’ purchase at the 7-Eleven he walked to before his encounter with the officers, police dispatch information and data from the Taser that Burbank used on Ellis to determine the timing of events in this case.
Answering questions from Nicolavo, Fredericks said Ellis made a transaction at 11:11 p.m. at the convenience store, and it would have taken 10 minutes to get to the intersection of 96th Street and Ainsworth Avenue, where he met the officers.
Meanwhile, Burbank and Collins were working a traffic stop, Nicolavo said. Fredericks said based on police dispatch and his analysis, that call was cleared less than two minutes before doorbell security video began recording the officers’ encounter with Ellis.
Nicolavo also asked the analyst when Burbank shocked Ellis with a Taser. Fredericks said the first activation was at 11:22 p.m. and 11 seconds, and the second and third activations occurred seconds later. He said 53 seconds passed between the first and last shock.
Ellis’ sister and mother, Monét Carter-Mixon and Marcia Carter-Patterson, were expected to testify Wednesday afternoon.
This story was originally published October 4, 2023 at 12:19 PM.
