Daniel Prude
Daniel Prude
On March 23, 2020, Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old African-American man (September 20, 1978 – March 30, 2020),was fatally injured after being physically restrained by Rochester, New York, police officers. Prude had been suffering from a mental health episode after ingesting PCP and was walking naked in the city's streets. The officers put a spit hood over his head after he began spitting. They held him face down on the pavement for two minutes and fifteen seconds, and he stopped breathing. Prude received CPR on the scene and later died of complications from asphyxia after being taken off life support.
The autopsy report ruled Prude's death a homicide and also included the contributing factors to his death as "excited delirium and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or PCP". The killing first received attention in September 2020 when the police body camera video and written reports were released along with the autopsy report. Following the report's release, protesters demonstrated outside the Rochester police headquarters and many considered the death to be related to Prude's race. The demonstrations were connected to the Black Lives Matter movement and the string of racial unrest events of 2020.
