Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Episode 2: Little Big Sister

Ways To Subscribe
Lance Kagey Of Rotator Creative

In the stillness of the pandemic, Monèt hunts down crucial information.

The 2020 police killing of Manuel "Manny" Ellis, a Black man in Tacoma, brought a reckoning to Washington State and has set up what promises to be one of the highest-profile trials in Pacific Northwest history.

The story unfolds in The Walk Home, a podcast by KNKX Public Radio and The Seattle Times, with support from NPR. It's sponsored by MovetoTacoma.com, the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation and Group Health Foundation.

Find more information at thewalkhomepodcast.org.


Links to source materials

Dive deeper into this story and our reporting.


Transcript

Note: The Walk Home was produced as an audio series. If you are able, we encourage you to listen to the series. This transcript is provided for reference only and may contain typos. Please confirm accuracy before quoting.

Episode 2: “Little Big Sister”

Mayowa Aina: This podcast includes descriptions of violence and death. Please take care while listening.

Kari Plog: Manny Ellis died in March 2020. Just days after what was then the United States’ first known COVID-19 death. That death happened right here in Washington state.

Archival (news clip): “The deceased is a man in his 50’s. He was treated at a hospital outside of Seattle. And health officials say they don’t know how he contracted the disease…”

Archival (news clip): “Today marks a new reality in the Puget Sound region…”

Archival (news clip): “The governor is mandating and ordering that people in Washington State are immediately prohibited from leaving their home or place of residence…”

Plog: Schools, restaurants and offices shut down. Suddenly, most of us were stuck at home. Maybe a little bit scared. Or bored.

Archival (news clip): “The NBA has suspended its entire season.”

Archival (news clip): “Major League Baseball announcing that Opening Day will be delayed by at least two weeks…”

Archival (news clip): “The virus is blamed for at least 38 deaths in the U.S., the majority at a nursing home in the Seattle area.”

Plog: For Manny’s little sister, Monèt, it was like her brother died and the world just stopped.

Monèt Carter-Mixon:  “I felt like reality wasn't actually reality just because of how crazy everything was on top of him dying. So it was like, that month, almost two months, was a blur.”

Plog: Basic things like combing her hair, brushing her teeth, showering, eating - Monèt says she just couldn’t do it.

Carter-Mixon: “I don't even think I breastfed my baby. My mom was taking care of my kids. I was just in the bed. I was not there. I was checked out, I checked out. My oldest son actually went back to sleeping with me in the bed because he knew something was wrong.”

Plog: “Did that help at all?”

Carter-Mixon: “No. Mm-mm. Nothing helped.”

Plog: Monèt’s mom encouraged all her kids to have hobbies, passions. For Monèt, growing up, it was dancing. She was actually classically trained in ballet and studied all around the country. One of the people who supported Monèt, inspired her, was her godmother, a dancer. And one day while Monèt was in this fog after Manny’s death, her godmother connected her with some people in New York. They were dancers, but also activists.

They were cautious, careful how they communicated with her and how much they revealed about themselves. But who they are, that’s not really as important as what they said.

Carter-Mixon: “They said that, ‘If this happened to you and your brother was the one here, not you, what would he do?’ And that’s when I was just like, ‘Oh shit. It's not about trying to keep the peace. It's time to disturb the peace. Like, something happened to your brother and it shouldn't have happened.’ 

“‘You know how the system was built for us to fail. You see how it failed your brother. You know that what they did wasn’t right.’ And time and time again they reminded me of all the other police killings that they want us to forget about. And then I started thinking about it and I’m like ‘Wait. Hold up. No. This isn’t right. This is that, but it just happened to me!’”

“Them reminding me of all of that, that helped me like snap out of it.”

“They put the battery in my back (laughs)”

“I was just like, ‘I need to get down to the bottom of this.’ Like, ‘I need to figure out what the fuck happened to my brother.’”

Plog: For Monèt to get answers, she’d need to grab people’s attention. She’d need a piece of evidence they couldn’t ignore. Something that could challenge the police version of what happened.

Carter-Mixon: “I really thought that a video would basically prove, ‘Yo, he's innocent.’ I was like, ‘If I could just get one post or one thing to go viral, it's over. And a video will definitely go viral.’”

Plog: All she had to do was find it.

From KNKX Public Radio and The Seattle Times, this is The Walk Home. Episode 2: Little Big Sister

Plog: A couple months had passed since Manny’s death. Monèt still had exactly two clues. One was the police account of her brother’s death that had been published in the newspaper, which described Manny as the aggressor, attacking cops. The other was two seconds of audio from a police scanner that captured him saying, “I can’t breathe.” She needed more.

Carter-Mixon: “I would sit on my laptop literally for like 12 to 15 hours a day, like just researching stuff, trying to figure out this and that what this meant. I probably could have earned a law degree.”

Plog: Monèt, doesn’t have a law degree. So, she called a lawyer.

Carter-Mixon: “She had told me that she hired a private investigator. And she said, you know, ‘Nothing happened to your brother.’ That’s what the private investigator said.  Basically, she was saying that he was in the wrong, that if they would have been in the wrong, then they would have been chattering and talking about it. And there was no chatter. So it was like a solid kill, they didn't do anything wrong. And I was just like, ‘Oh, really?’” 

Plog: Monèt ramped up her efforts, reaching out to everyone she could think of.

Carter-Mixon: “I was making posts like every day, every other day. I went through my whole entire friends list and I had sent the YouTube video, the YouTube sound of my brother being heard on the police audio, and I shared that with everybody on my friends list, with all types of people. One person, I don't like him, Shaun King,  blew his ass up every fucking day and like Al Sharpton. I was sending out emails like to the NAACP. Like whoever.”

Plog: And Monèt took her investigation into the field, to the spot where Manny died. That intersection at 96th and Ainsworth, right on the border of South Tacoma. This is where the city turns into suburbs. A sign literally across the street tells you that you’re leaving Tacoma and entering county territory. There’s a weathered picket fence, with newer slats randomly patched in. The grass along the sidewalk could use some love, it’s a little wild. And littered with pieces of paper tossed from car windows. Older houses look out across little yards, to a busy road where traffic zooms past. It’s the kind of spot where you could drive by every day for years without noticing a single thing about it.

What Monèt noticed right away, were all the front doors just steps from the street. Maybe people living there saw something, or maybe some of them had security cameras. So, she downloaded an app where people chatter about what’s going on in the neighborhood - everything from stolen packages to car prowlers to police activity.

Carter-Mixon: “Someone had posted about what happened to Manny. Everyone was saying like, ‘Oh yeah, that's what happens. You know, the police killed someone.’ But the neighbor, I think it was Neighbor 24 - had said, ‘No, they killed that man in cold blood.’ They saw something. I know they did.”

Plog: But the way this app works, Neighbor 24, and everyone else, they’re anonymous. Monèt had no way of tracking them down. The lawyer, the famous civil rights activists and organizations, the neighbors – all dead ends. To Monèt, even her own family felt like a barrier.

Carter-Mixon:  “They didn't want to do the GoFundMe because they didn't want to seem like they needed help. They didn't want to, like, put the story out there. Really, everyone thought that Manny was just high on drugs, you know, and they felt like, ‘Oh, well, because he's high on drugs he shouldn't put himself in that situation.’”

Plog: Monèt says her family wanted to wait for the official investigation by the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department to run its course. But Monèt hadn’t heard a single thing from investigators. It seemed like everyone around her was trying to get back to normal. As normal as life can be in a pandemic anyway. And Manny’s story was getting cast aside, another buried headline of a Black man who used drugs and had a fatal run-in with the law.

And then…

Archival (news clip): “We begin tonight with breaking news. Unrest in the streets of downtown Seattle in response to the death of George Floyd.”

Archival (news clip): “A call for justice heard across the country and tonight a former police officer in Minneapolis is facing charges.”

Archival (news clip): “And the death of George Floyd has sparked national outrage. He was an unarmed Black man who died in police custody on Monday after an officer was seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he struggled to breathe.”

Archival (news clip): “There’s traffic here as a car is burning…”

Plog: People in the Pacific Northwest, and across the country, woke up to images of cars on fire in downtown Seattle.

Archival (news clip):“I’m just trying to make sure our photographer can cross the street safely. Mike, come here. Come here, MIke. Cross the street now, please. C’mon. C’mon.” 

Plog: They were police cars and other government vehicles. On the news you could watch the white paint glowing orange, the roofs collapsing. You could hear pops as parts exploded. Overnight, the pandemic was no longer the most important story in the world.

Maybe it was the video of George Floyd – so close-up, the way it seemed to last forever. Maybe it was the fact that four Minneapolis police officers were fired, and one was charged with murder right away. That almost never happens. Damn near everyone, or at least it felt like everyone, believed what they saw was wrong. Or maybe three months of pandemic boredom, restlessness, people feeling powerless, just needed a catalyst. Either way, people were angry in a way we hadn’t seen in a long time.

Archival (news clip): “Go, go, go, go, go. Excuse me. Hold on, hold on. Keep going. Move, move. Just keep walking. Lots of tear gas. We gotta go. Yes, sir. We’re moving.”  

Monèt never watched the video. But when she saw the reactions to it, those cars burning, people marching, chanting George Floyd’s name, she felt two things at once. One: She felt happy for George Floyd’s family, because the world was recognizing their loss.

Plog: “What else were you feeling?”

Carter-Mixon: “Oh, I was pissed. You know, there's been plenty of people out here who have gotten, especially in Tacoma, who have gotten shot and killed and nobody does anything. But it happens somewhere else and you don't even live there and you're pissed off, ready to go bust in the Nordstrom's and loot at Nordstrom's or tear up Downtown Seattle. No. A national protest, I get it, but let's start out here first.” 

Plog: Manny had been dead for three months. Monèt had heard him tell officers he couldn’t breathe. She wanted cars to burn for Manny, too.

After George Floyd was killed, Monèt’s investigation started to change. It was little things at first. She kept making phone calls, but now, people actually answered.

James Bible: “Shoot. (laughs) I think, honestly, I became a civil rights attorney in 1986 while up against a wall being told I wasn't special by a Seattle police officer.”

Plog: James Bible grew up in Seattle. In 1986 he was 14 years old, an athlete who got good grades.

Bible: “I think it was that moment right there being patted down, told that I had jaywalked when I did not then told that I had run from officers, when I had not with people walking past me as if I had done something wrong. When three Black kids just went to play video games at a place called Arnold's in the University District.”

Plog: James went on to lead Seattle’s branch of the NAACP for a while.

Archival (James Bible at a press conference): “This entire school district, including schools on the North End, are failing Black children (applause).”

Plog: And made his name as a lawyer representing families of people killed by police.

Archival (James Bible at a press conference): “Che Taylor was in reasonable fear for his life at the time that he was shot five times by police officers …”

Plog: But, in late May 2020, as cars burned on television following the killing of George Floyd, James watched from a hospital bed.

Bible: “High blood pressure, kidney failure. I have real health concerns. Stress related, genetics related. People try to calm me down and then things like this happen. And as a civil rights attorney, it was hard to just lay in a bed with all this happening and not be outside doing anything. My doctors had done the best that they could to keep my computer and my phone away from me and to frankly just try to get me to a place where I was relaxing and breathing.”

“I got calls from Monèt and one of Monèt's friends. Facebook messages and contacts as well. And I was listening to those and I was responding and I was saying, you know, ‘I'm in the hospital right now. I’m on a bed. They've got me resting. They don't know totally how long I'm going to be here. I'm told that I need to slow down.’”

“They talked more about what their concerns were, how worried they were. And as I was listening to what they were saying, I was staring at a television seeing visuals of George Floyd and made a promise that once I was out of the hospital, I would take a peek at this case and see if there's anything that I could do.”

Plog: “Tell me about that first phone call with James Bible when you finally connected with him.”

Carter-Mixon:  “(Laughs) I was just, I was happy and I felt safe. The experience that he has with the system and everything that he knows, it really was like the missing piece.” 

Bible:  “I have to say that we get a lot of calls all over from literally all over from here to Mississippi about police instances and cases and the like. And one of the things that we have to gauge is how dedicated is the person on the other line to making sure that we can achieve justice?”

Bible “You could hear in her voice that if it was just her with a bullhorn in front of the county building or the City of Tacoma building or wherever, that's how it was going to be. That it would be a battle for her to the very end. And that was an appealing thing because it… tells us something about what her brother meant to her and what she actually knew about her brother.” 

Plog: Finally, after weeks of trying to break through to someone, Monèt wasn’t on her own anymore. Something had changed. And, in the days ahead, things were about to change a lot more.

Mayowa Aina: When it comes to activism in Tacoma there are plenty of people to connect with. But one of the most accessible is probably Jamika Scott.

Jamika Scott: “Very rarely do I mind my own business when it comes to Tacoma (laughs).”

Aina: Jamika is a lifelong Tacoman. And of course, she has a special place in her heart for her neighborhood.

Scott: “My spirit, my soul, lives in the Hilltop.”

Aina: The Hilltop historically Black neighborhood in Tacoma and it’s right in the center of the city. The same way people think Tacoma is more dangerous than Seattle, the Hilltop in particular carries that reputation within the city. Jamika’s heard it all before…

Scott: “… he's like, ‘Oh, yeah, I guess somebody got shot, haha you know, the Hilltop.’ And so it's like you had these people who see the hilltop as like, ‘Oh, I ventured into the hilltop, like, give me my street cred’. Or ‘Ha ha ha, of course another person got shot and of course it was the hilltop…’ 

Aina: But that reputation is slowly starting to change thanks to new development and millions of dollars in investment. Jamika, and the rest of the Hilltop community, don’t want that development to push out and leave behind families who have always lived there.

She’s in her 30s. She laughs pretty easily, which shows off her megawatt smile. And she walks around like she’s got her hands on her hips at all times, in a good way. She’s a writer, a filmmaker, and she’s very funny on TikTok.

Archival (Jamika in a TikTok video): “White American Vernacular English: ‘Ohp! Sorry!’, ‘Buckle up, buttercup,’ (sings ‘Sweet Caroline’) ...’”

Aina: But she’s probably best known for being a fighter. Someone who’s trying to change things for the better. In 2014, when Mike Brown was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, the Black Lives Matter movement started gaining traction. And Jamika was looking for a way to participate.

Scott: “I looked up like Tacoma NAACP or like I was, you know, just like looking up different things. And I didn't really see anybody like doing anything in a way that spoke to me.”

Aina: So, she organized a march. After that Jamika, and a few other people, started a group known as the Tacoma Action Collective. Some people call them TAC. In 2015, the group organized a die-in at the Tacoma Art Museum, protesting the lack of Black voices in an exhibit about the AIDS crisis.

Archival (#stoperasingblackpeople documentary trailer clip): “We weren’t going to sit around in a circle and try to hold everybody’s hands and tell them how anti-Black they were. We were going to shut it down.”

Aina: Then, they became known for Black Brunch – it was this thing where they would bust into Sunday brunch at local restaurants to tell people about racial injustice.

Archival (Tacoma city council meeting): Black brunch is about reclaiming a space …

Aina: And in 2016, when a video came out showing an off-duty Tacoma police officer pulling a then-15-year-old girl from her bike by her hair, throwing her to the ground, tasing, then arresting her, TAC called attention to it at a local city council meeting.

Archival (Tacoma city council meeting): “Every 28 hours a Black person in America is killed by a police officer, a security guard…”

Scott: “People in the community came to trust our voice”

Archival (Tacoma city council meeting): “We are talking about systems, a system that was not made for Black people. If your response to our cries and demands for a change to this system is, ‘Oh my brother is a police officer, he’s a good officer,’ I challenge you to ask yourself why you’re defending an individual and ignoring a system...”

Scott: “Whether it was trust or respect or fear from those in power. They've learned that, if TAC comes to you with something, there better be a response otherwise people are going to hear about it.” 

Archival (Tacoma city council meeting): (Singing “Which side are you on?”)

Aina: TAC doesn’t let people get comfortable. In a place like this, the extremely white, extremely educated, Pacific Northwest, liberal politics and politeness cover up the uncomfortable reality of racism, classism and all the other isms.

Davon White: “As liberal as we are quote unquote, in Washington, the reality of it is that you never know what could happen, being Black, in Washington in a predominantly white state.”

Rachel Askew: “To be in a Black body, and to feel unsafe in other parts of Tacoma, to feel like people are going to call the police on me walking through my own neighborhood… And that has happened. You know, so I’m not just saying that to say that, that has happened to me.” 

Lynese Cammack: He came outside and was out there and was cussing. His neighbors came outside, and he was like, ‘Oh, I'm going to call the police on you guys.’ And I was like, ‘This man doesn't get, he has no clue why we're out here.’ You just basically said you are going to kill me! And you just looked at every single one of us and said, ‘You know what, you're making me uncomfortable and I'm willing to put your life on the line.’

Aina: This shit happens. And I’ll be frank, it sucks to have to dredge up those experiences as proof. But, it happens. Even in a state where weed is legal and Black Lives Matter signs are all over the place. Even in a state run by Democrats. Even in a state that elected the first Chinese American governor back in the ‘90s, and where the two of the largest cities have been run by multiple Black mayors and elected officials for decades.

To TAC, and people who support them, those markers of equality and inclusivity don’t mean much when Black people, poor people, and disabled people, don’t feel free. So, they keep calling out that nuance. Jamika says TAC members read about Manny’s case in the newspaper at first, and they decided to keep an eye on it. Then, Monèt reached out.

Scott: “I think we all saw a lot of ourselves in Monèt when she was looking for answers. And I think that we all saw immediately we saw the egregiousness of it. And I think that it was just, none of us would have been able to put our heads on a pillow at night if we had said ‘there’s nothing we can do.”

Aina: Monèt still wanted her brother’s name to go viral. And now she had both a lawyer and a group of activists who knew how to get attention.

Plog: Monèt was starting to make plans with her lawyer, James Bible, and Tacoma Action Collective, when, one day, she got a phone call from a newspaper reporter, from The News-Tribune. It was the same one who wrote that first article about Manny’s death, three months earlier.

Carter-Mixon:  “And she said, ‘Hey, I wanted to let you know before I put out a story, but I just got word back from the medical examiner at the time that he had ruled your brother's death a homicide. It was caused by hypoxia due to physical restraint.’ And she had explained, like, you know, that hypoxia is when there's loss of oxygen to the brain.” 

Plog: When a medical examiner says “homicide” it means a death was caused by someone else. It may or may not be a crime, that’s for others to decide. And Monèt didn’t have the report yet. But if this reporter was right, it meant the medical examiner, the doctor who did her brother’s autopsy, said Manny did not die of “excited delirium,” like the police had speculated. His body did not just give out. This meant the police had killed him.

Carter-Mixon: “I was relieved. I felt relieved because I wasn't having to, like, prove anything to anybody anymore. But then with that same feeling of relief, I just felt angry and hurt. Because why did they do that? You know? Why?

Plog: Nobody from the county had said anything to Monèt or her family about this homicide ruling. The News Tribune published an article about it the next day. I’ll admit, before this, I hadn’t focused much on this case. I had seen people sharing stuff about Manny on social media here and there, but my colleagues and I were swept up in covering the pandemic. This story stood out, though. For me, for everyone. This was breaking news.

Archival (news clip): There’s some disturbing echoes between this case and the George Floyd case in Minneapolis…

Archival (news clip): There was no heads on knees, there was no cutting off of circulation, none of that…

Plog: That’s the sheriff’s spokesman, on TV for the first time since the department started investigating the case three months earlier. Tacoma Action Collective called out city and county officials on Twitter and Facebook, demanding accountability and a new investigation. #JusticeForManny was trending.

Carter-Mixon: “That was when I began planning the vigil and creating a list of demands.”

Archival (news clip): “... and right here tonight, in the intersection where he died, there will be an 8 o’clock vigil. And I am told family and friends are expected here. We’ll stay here live and we’ll bring you coverage all throughout the evening. Reporting live in Tacoma. Shelby Miller. Kiro 7 News.”

Plog: On June 3, 2020, exactly three months after Manny died, a crowd grew at that nondescript intersection in Tacoma: 96th and Ainsworth. It swelled to hundreds of people. They held candles and flowers and handwritten posters that said “Justice for Manny.”

Archival (Will James at Manny Ellis vigil): “What made you want to come to this vigil tonight?”

Archival (Mu Knowles at Manny Ellis vigil): “To honor the life of Manuel Ellis and to really just be with other Black folks to be honest. I’m really just needing that right now, during these moments.”

Archival (Katrina Johnson at Manny Ellis vigil): “I’m just wanting to be here to support the family because I know what it feels like to lose a loved one to the police use of deadly force because the police killed my cousin up in Seattle, Charleena Lyles. It took George Floyd’s murder to catapult everybody into wanting to do what families have already been doing for a long time. And we are just excited and welcoming them to the fight that we’ve already been doing.”

Archival (Mu Knowles at Manny Ellis vigil): “It feels good. It feels good to be with your community and be with people that have similar experiences as you and people who are mourning and grieving just like you right now. I feel like there’s some things some other people just can’t understand.”

Plog: Everyone stood around waiting for Monèt and her family. By the time they got there, the sun was going down, turning the sky peach and gold. Intense, moody clouds drifted by. A musician set up a keyboard alongside that worn-out picket fence.

Carter-Mixon: “I saw people like that I knew when I was younger, like Manny's friends from when I was little, but we're all grown up now. It was so much. It was, it was so much going on and it was a lot to take in.”

Plog: First, Monèt’s older brother, Matthew, spoke.

Archival (Matthew Ellis at Manny Ellis vigil): “Hey everyone. Thanks for coming out. I’m not good at this type of stuff so I’m going to keep it short.”

Archival (Unknown at Manny Ellis vigil): “Can’t hear you.”

Archival (Carter-Mixon at Manny Ellis vigil): “He’s not a loud person!”

Archival (Matthew Ellis at Manny Ellis vigil): “Definitely not a loud person. Very quiet. So uh, my brother’s gone and I miss him every single day.”

Plog: Next up was Manny’s mom, Marcia.

Archival (Marcia Carter at Manny Ellis vigil): “I just want you all to know that he was a blessed child. Okay, he was blessed. He was good. ”

Plog: For Monèt, it was like her family was finally all on the same page. And then it was her turn. Everyone’s attention was fixed on her, as she took the mic from her mom.

Archival (Carter-Mixon at Manny Ellis vigil): “Okay, so I’m the strong one in the family so I’m going to try to stay strong. I’m not going to cry. As everyone in our family already knows, Manny and I, we were as thick as thieves.” 

Carter-Mixon: “I knew at the time there would be a lot of media there. I wanted them to be able to really hear from us, like from his actual family and understand who we were and the love that we had for him and who he left behind.”

Plog: Then, as she stood in front of the crowd, Monèt’s tone changed. It was like all the emotion of the past three months started bubbling out of her. Feelings that started building from that moment she fell to her knees at work, after learning her brother was dead.

Archival (Carter-Mixon at Manny Ellis vigil): “And since that day, it’s been nothing but chaos in my life, nothing but lies, nothing but secrets and people telling me to shut up. ‘Stop talking, you talk too much, you’re doing too much, just wait a second, hold on.’” 

Carter-Mixon: “Oh, I was pissed. I was pissed. It really like fucks with you mentally to be dismissed, then to just be told like, ‘Oh yeah, they did this, this is bad, they were wrong.’ Like, what the fuck? That's what I've been saying.” 

Archival (Carter-Mixon at Manny Ellis vigil):  “I don’t even know, like I’m kind of overwhelmed with all of this. I wasn’t expecting it, just because no one really wanted to pay attention. But, as we said earlier, Manny is George Floyd. Don’t listen to what they’re trying to say. I knew my brother. I had faith in my brother. Anytime I needed him, he was always there for me. So I don’t have no choice but to be there for him and get justice for him. And I will get justice for my brother, trust me. Can you guys please like, I’m begging you please, spread the word. Just as big as my mouth is, I need you guys to amplify it for me because I’m amplifying my brother’s mouth from his grave. He’s still screaming, ‘Sis, go get ‘em, sis. Don’t let up, sis.’ So I really need you guys to help me amplify his voice. He needs to be heard. Not just in Tacoma, not just in Seattle, not just in Washington, the whole globe is going to know about Manuel Ellis. They’re going to know about what happened here in Tacoma, Washington, on March 3rd.”

Carter-Mixon: “I could hear Manny saying like, ‘Whoa, what the fuck did you just do?’ (laughs).”

Archival (Andre Ellis at Manny Ellis vigil): “Manny.”

Archival (Crowd at Manny Ellis vigil): “Matters.”

Archival (Andre Ellis at Manny Ellis vigil): “Manny.”

Archival (Crowd at Manny Ellis vigil): “Matters.”

Carter-Mixon: “I mean, it was nice they were saying his name and, but it was still just like, ‘Wait what?’ Like, ‘Whoa.’ It was kind of surreal. It's just like a weird feeling.” 

Plog: But, the attention wasn’t enough. She still needed evidence. The vigil was another chance to shake something loose – a clue, a witness, a video. There was a chance someone in the crowd, or someone watching the vigil on the news, saw something.

And then, the next morning, Monèt woke up to a short Facebook message. It started: “Hi My name is Sara.” It ended: “I have some information. Along with footage.”

Carter-Mixon: “She sent me the video.”

Archival (Sara McDowell in cellphone video): “Hey! Stop! Oh my god! Stop hitting him! Stop hitting him! Just arrest him! Just arrest him!”

Carter-Mixon: And then I sent it to James, and he was when he saw the video, he was like, ‘We got to meet her right now. I need to get a statement from her right now.’”

Bible: “Well, my reaction was... shock.”

Archival (Sara McDowell in cellphone video): “Just arrest him! Just arrest him! Oh my god that looks so scary!”

Carter-Mixon: “I couldn't breathe. Like even when I talk about it, I was like, ‘Breathe, Monèt.’ Like I just was kind of …stuck.”

Plog: The video was recorded on a smartphone, from a car, by a woman who was driving past the scene that night. Sara McDowell. It’s 37 seconds long, and a little shaky. Sara’s car is behind the officers’ SUV, which is parked at a stoplight. You can’t see much while she’s yelling at them. But briefly, at the beginning and the end, you can see Manny.

It looks like he’s thrown to the ground in the first couple seconds. As he hits the pavement, one of the officers looks like he’s throwing a punch. You can see Manny’s legs, his bright yellow sweatpants and white sneakers, swinging wildly in the air. The video ends with Manny on the ground. It looks like the officers are on top of him.

Carter-Mixon: “Even though, you know, he's obviously he's no longer here, when I was watching that video, for some reason I thought like, you know, he was going to get up, that everything was going to be okay, like... But obviously, that's not what happened, you know? But… yeah.”

Bible: “Somebody had actually been in a place where they had the wherewithal to film it in the middle of the night and be brave enough to step out of their car and say, ‘This is enough’ To say, ‘Stop it. Just arrest him.’ Not knowing any of the things that had happened or not happened. The strength involved in that is a really powerful sort of thing. So, I would say that was my initial reaction was, ‘Wow.’ Because a lot of people just, frankly, just drive on by.”

Plog: Sara was driving to her sister’s house that night, where she was planning to stay, when she passed by 96th and Ainsworth. The video she recorded sat in her camera roll for three months, before she knew what she had seen. But then the vigil stirred up all that attention around Manny’s case. That’s when Sara realized that the police killing everybody was talking about, it’s what she had recorded that night.

Carter-Mixon: “So when she found out, you know, she witnessed my brother's death, she was crying. She was so sad. She was just like, she was like, ‘I wish I could have, I wish I would've did something.”

“I told her I was like, ’Nah, you're an angel like for real, because the fact that you're brave enough to even be talking to me right now and willing to give me this video like, you have no idea, like how grateful I am for you because you basically gave me my validation that I really needed.’ I needed to see it and I wanted to see him. They wouldn't let me see him. You know, when he was at the medical examiner's office, I didn't get to see him in the way that he was when he died, you know?.”

Plog: What Sara’s video doesn’t show is what led up to police reacting to Manny the way they did. But in that moment, Monèt didn’t care.

Carter-Mixon: “I didn’t wonder why they did it. I wondered why they took it that far. Why the overkill?’” Of course, when the video came out, it was kind of like, ‘OK, well, there's the viral moment that we needed.’ And it was fucked up because who wants to see their brother in that light?  But if that's what it takes for me to get some answers, that’s what I’m gonna do.” 

Plog: Five days. It had been just five days since those cars in downtown Seattle burned on live TV, following the killing of George Floyd. Before that moment, Monèt was screaming into the void. Now, less than a week later, Manny’s name was on national TV.

Archival (news clip): “Eerie echoes of George Floyd’s death have brought new attention to the case of Manuel Ellis, a suspect killed in police custody three months ago. Newly released video shows police in Tacoma, Washington hitting Ellis…”

Plog: As more people paid attention, new details started surfacing about what happened to Manny.

Carol Mitchell:  “We thought it was just Tacoma, so the county didn't really have to be terribly concerned about it internally.” 

Patrick Malone:  “City leaders are tense and county leaders are tense that Tacoma’s gonna burn.”

Archival (Officer Collins in an interview): “And from this point on it’s just a melee. It’s wild. There’s fists flying. I run in…”

Archival (Jay Inslee at a press conference): “The attorney general has also raised serious concerns about the Pierce County Sheriff's Office...”

Plog: And new questions, too. Why was Monèt the first person to find that video? And that autopsy report, why did Manny’s family learn about that from a reporter not someone at the county? What was going on behind the scenes with the official investigation?

That’s in the next episode of “The Walk Home.”

Season 1
Kari Plog is a former KNKX reporter who covered the people and systems in Pierce, Thurston and Kitsap counties, with an emphasis on police accountability.
Mayowa Aina covers cost-of-living and affordability issues in Western Washington. She focuses on how people do (or don't) make ends meet, impacts on residents' earning potential and proposed solutions for supporting people living at the margins of our community. Get in touch with her by emailing maina@knkx.org.
Will James is a former KNKX reporter and was part of the special projects team, reporting and producing podcasts such as Outsiders and The Walk Home.
Related Stories