‘I’m Doing This for My Friend’: Imprisoned Man Recounts Watching Guards Beat Messiah Nantwi to Death

To staff the prisons during the strike, Governor Kathy Hochul deployed New York National Guard troops. One of them, ostensibly overwhelmed in the unfamiliar environment, called in the emergency response team that was allegedly responsible for Nantwi’s death, according to witnesses. His killing became another flashpoint for a system where tensions remain high.

Incarcerated people housed in Nantwi’s dorm heard and witnessed some of the brutal beatdown from outside the cell. Nine overcame fear of retaliation by prison guards and spoke to The New York Times, which first reported the death. Yet the sole incarcerated witness in the room, Nantwi’s cellmate, didn’t get the chance to share what he saw. The afternoon of the alleged killing, authorities removed him from Midstate — to keep him out of vengeful guards’ crosshairs, he said they told him — temporarily cutting him off from phone service.

New York Focus tracked down the cellmate, who recounted the day’s events through phone calls, electronic messages, and a handwritten letter. He requested that his name and location be withheld until grand jury proceedings in Nantwi’s killing commence, fearful that officers at his current facility will prematurely learn of his role in the case and retaliate against him. Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick, who was appointed special prosecutor in the case, has said that his office will likely present to a grand jury early next month. Fifteen prison staffers were placed on leave after the incident.

The cellmate’s accounts match the Times’s reporting and the testimony of another witness who spoke to New York Focus. They offer new insight into the gruesome event, the investigation into it, and what incarcerated people have long described as abuse with impunity in New York state prisons.

The cellmate wonders how the prison system will protect him after he testifies and his identity becomes publicly known.

“That’s just a chance I’m taking,” he said. “I’m doing this for my friend.”

The morning of March 1, Nantwi’s cellmate awoke from a nap to find Nantwi crying. He was off of his psychiatric medication, witnesses told the Times. The cellmate said prison staff hadn’t been giving him his normal medication, and he wouldn’t take what they gave him instead.

Nantwi was still emotional when he went to take a shower later that morning. Witnesses recalled hearing him crying in the shower area. They then heard him get into an argument with a National Guardsman: His shower had overlapped with “count,” the routine security census when officers tally residents as they stand near their cells or bunks.

“I didn’t know it was count,” the cellmate, still in their room, heard Nantwi say in a loud voice.

By all available accounts, the confrontation was uneventful. The cellmate said that Nantwi threw his hands up, then walked back to their cell.

“There was no threat, no act of violence,” Jordan McLin, who was bunked in the same dorm as Nantwi, told New York Focus the day after his death. “But the National Guard felt some type of way,” he said. “They were scared.”

One of the troops activated an alert that called in backup.

The cellmate said he heard keys jingling and shoes traipsing through the snow outside, then the door to their dorm opening. “What room is he in?” he heard a guard ask.

A guard and two officers with the prison’s SWAT-style Correctional Emergency Response Team, or CERT, entered their cell. “Who has the problem?” the guard said. Nantwi and his cellmate replied that there was no problem. A National Guard troop then entered the room and pointed to Nantwi, the cellmate recalled.

One CERT officer approached the cellmate in the back of the room, punched him in the ribs, and told him to shut up, he said. The officer shoved his head against the wall at an angle that allowed him to see other CERT officers enter the room and approach Nantwi.

Roughly seven officers took part in the beatdown, the cellmate and McLin said. (Witnesses outside the room recalled seeing seven to 15 officers responding to the call for backup.) The cellmate remembers seeing them push Nantwi onto his bed and kick and punch his head and body. Some took out their batons and beat him. Others stomped on his head, back, and legs.

At one point, officers picked Nantwi up and slammed him to the ground. The cellmate recalled hearing a “wet splat sound.” They knocked him out twice, the cellmate recalled, returning him to consciousness with more punches and kicks.

One officer kicked Nantwi in the face with a two-step running start, “like he was making a punt in a football game,” the cellmate said. One tried to choke him, the cellmate recalled, but pulled his hand back and said something about Nantwi biting him.

The CERT officers did not wear body cameras, the cellmate said, even though a prison agency policy, promulgated in response to the December killing of Brooks, requires officers to wear body cameras and activate them while interacting with incarcerated people. The only one visibly wearing a body camera was the guard who entered the cell first, the cellmate recalled. Before the beating started, he turned his back to the cell and stood in the doorway, the cellmate, McLin, and other witnesses reported.

Nantwi pleaded with the officers as they allegedly killed him. “I didn’t do nothing,” he said repeatedly, according to the cellmate. “Stop, you’re really hurting me,” he then said. Guards told him to “stop resisting,” even though he wasn’t fighting back, witnesses recalled.

Nantwi’s cries soon became incomprehensible, the cellmate said. Then, he went silent.

The officers continued beating him. Witnesses said it went on for several minutes.

Officers then handcuffed the unconscious Nantwi. He didn’t move. They dragged him out of the room and into the dorm gallery, where dozens of incarcerated people had been watching and listening.