Jury hears recorded statements of two police officers accused of killing Manuel Ellis

Jurors heard audio recordings Monday of interviews with two of the three Tacoma police officers charged in the death of Manuel Ellis as their trial entered its fifth week.

Officers Matthew Collins and Christopher “Shane” Burbank, during interviews with detectives, described a harrowing scene in which Ellis aggressively fought them. Their accounts strayed wildly from the testimony of four eyewitnesses who’ve already testified that the officers attacked Ellis unprovoked. At key moments, the officers contradicted each other.

Collins and Burbank provided their statements to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department within days of Ellis’ death, months before eyewitness videos surfaced and punched holes in parts of the officers’ stories.

Ellis died March 3, 2020, after repeatedly telling officers he could not breathe while they continued to apply pressure as he lay prone on the pavement near an intersection where Collins and Burbank say they’d seen him trying to open the door of a passing car. The Pierce County medical examiner ruled Ellis’ death a homicide caused by oxygen deprivation from physical restraint. Lawyers for the officers blame the death on a high level of methamphetamine in Ellis’ system combined with a heart irregularity.

Collins, 40, Burbank, 38, and Timothy Rankine, 34, are all on trial for second-degree manslaughter. Collins and Burbank also are charged with second-degree murder. All three have pleaded not guilty, are free on bail and remain employed by the Tacoma Police Department on paid leave.

Collins and Burbank both said Ellis banged on the passenger side window of their cruiser, where Burbank sat. The officers provided detectives differing accounts of how the physical struggle with Ellis began.

Collins said he exited the driver’s side of his police cruiser, and Ellis “turns to me about as soon as I get to the front of the car. He grabs me by my vest, lifts me off my feet and throws me in the street. I left my feet … this guy had superhuman strength.”

None of the four eyewitnesses saw what Collins described. Two of those witnesses testified that they observed Collins from the moment he exited his vehicle.

Burbank provided a very different description of how the struggle with Ellis began.

“The suspect kind of turned toward Officer Collins in a fighting stance …,” Burbank said on the recording. “Like he was about to fight him.”

Pressed further by detectives, Burbank said Ellis “was probably going to attack [Collins] or start fighting him,” so Burbank flung open the police cruiser door, knocking Ellis to the ground. That is consistent with the testimony of the three eyewitnesses who’ve testified they saw that the scrum begin, although the witnesses say Ellis was walking away from the car when he appeared to be summoned back.

From there, Collins’ and Burbank’s accounts line up closely. They say Ellis punched and kicked at them as they tried to subdue him, prompting Collins to strike Ellis repeatedly with his elbows and place him in a chokehold aimed at cutting off blood flow to his brain, while Burbank delivered a series of Taser strikes to Ellis’ torso.

Collins and Burbank said Ellis hit them in the face, but photographs taken that night showed no signs of those injuries. The officers told detectives they were in a minutes-long struggle with Ellis, who bucked them off as they tried to sit on his back and take control of him.

Eyewitnesses and their videos show the officers beating Ellis, using Tasers and getting on top of him. Collins and Burbank told detectives they believed Ellis was impervious to the pain they were trying to inflict to make him stop resisting.

Rankine’s recorded interview with detectives was played for jurors last week. He arrived with his partner to back up Collins and Burbank. As Ellis lay prone with Rankine on his back, Rankine acknowledged hearing Ellis say he couldn’t breathe, but dismissed it as a false cry for help.

Neither Collins nor Burbank in their interviews said they heard Ellis say he couldn’t breathe, even though in audio plucked from videos at the scene, Ellis said numerous times he couldn’t breathe. And at one point when Collins and Burbank were the only officers present, Ellis can be heard pleading in distress, and someone can be heard responding, “Shut the (expletive) up.” Collins and Burbank described the sounds Ellis made as indistinguishable animalistic grunts.

Last week, jurors heard dueling testimony about “excited delirium,” a controversial term often applied to sudden deaths that occur in police custody. Major medical and psychiatric associations reject excited delirium as a valid cause of death. A medic from the Tacoma Fire Department testified with confidence that Ellis’ death was caused by excited delirium, although he acknowledged determining cause of death is not part of his job. Prosecutors countered with expert testimony from an accredited cardiologist who compared belief in excited delirium to embracing that “the Earth is flat.”

The cardiologist blamed Ellis’ death on his prolonged restraint by officers.

Testimony was to resume Monday afternoon in Pierce County Superior Court, when people who knew Ellis from the sober living home where he resided at the time of his death were expected to testify.

This story was originally published October 30, 2023 at 1:04 PM.