Up Next
Protests Swell Over Freddie Gray's Death in Baltimore Police Custody
"Democracy Now!" airs weekdays at 9 a.m. PT on KCET.
Protests in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray enter their fifth day. The 27-year-old African-American man died Sunday from spinal injuries one week after Baltimore police arrested him. His family and attorney say his voice box was crushed and his spine was "80 percent severed at his neck." A preliminary autopsy report showed Gray died of a spinal injury.
Video shot by a bystander shows Gray screaming in apparent agony as police drag him to a van. Another witness said the police bent Gray like a pretzel. While the police union has described the protesters as a lynch mob, former Black Panther Eddie Conway says Gray is the one who was lynched. "There was a lynch mob. There is a body. There was a death without a trial, without a jury, without a sentence. There was an execution. That's lynching," Conway says. "They're blaming the victims. They're blaming people that suffered the lynching for protesting."