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Milwaukee hotel workers fired after death of Black man pinned down outside
The employees allegedly involved in the death of a Black man who was pinned to the ground outside a downtown Milwaukee hotel have been fired, the hotel’s operator announced late Wednesday night.
Aimbridge Hospitality said, “We are saddened and shocked by what happened to D’vontaye Mitchell at the Hyatt Regency Milwaukee, and we extend our deepest sympathies to his family and loved ones.
“The conduct we saw from several associates on June 30 violated our policies and procedures and does not reflect our values as an organization or the behaviors we expect from our associates. Following review of their actions, their employment has been terminated. We will continue our independent investigation and do everything we can to support law enforcement with their investigation into this tragic incident.”
Hyatt said in an earlier statement that it “joins the family of D’Vontaye Mitchell in their calls for transparency, accountability and justice for this senseless tragedy. We believe that the employees of Aimbridge Hospitality who were involved should be terminated and that criminal charges should be filed.”
The family is also calling for charges to be brought.
Mitchell, 43, died at the Hyatt Regency after four security guards restrained him, holding him down on his stomach, media outlets have reported. Police have said Mitchell entered the hotel, caused a disturbance and fought with hotel employees as they were escorting him out. The family disputes that account.
The medical examiner’s office has said the preliminary cause of death was homicide, but the cause remains under investigation. No one has been criminally charged so far.
The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office said Wednesday that it and police investigators were awaiting full autopsy results and that the case was being reviewed as a homicide.
Samantha Mitchell / AP
Mitchell’s family livid, shaken
Surveillance and body camera video viewed by Mitchell’s family and their lawyers Wednesday at the district attorney’s office showed an unarmed man fleeing for his life while being punched and kicked, they said during an afternoon news conference.
“What I saw today was disgusting. It makes me sick to my stomach,” Mitchell’s widow, DeAsia Harmon said. “He ran for his life. He was trying to leave. He said ‘I’ll go,’ and they didn’t let him go.”
Harmon said the video showed a bleeding Mitchell being dragged outside the hotel. “They didn’t stop. They could have let him go, but they didn’t,” she said.
Noted civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump said the family’s legal team also has a signed affidavit from a hotel employee who said a security guard was striking Mitchell with a baton and that Mitchell posed no threat when he was on the ground. The worker said a security guard ordered him and a bellman to help hold Mitchell down, Crump continued.
Another lawyer, William Sulton, said the hotel video showed an on-duty hotel security guard take a photo of Mitchell’s lifeless body as the guard was being questioned by police. “Absolutely disgusting,” Sulton said.
Mitchell’s sister, Nayisha Mitchell, told CBS Milwaukee affiliate WDJT-TV after watching the video, “Actually seeing it up close and personal, I’m telling you it’s much, much, much, much worse.”
DeAsia Harmon told the station “to see the people involved, to see their faces, to see that they had no remorse” was especially hard.
Sulton told WDJT the original narrative from authorities — that security guards restrained Mitchell because he went into a women’s bathroom — is wrong. “An off-duty security officer attacked D’Vontaye. D’Vontaye ran from that individual,” he said.
Sulton added that Mitchell went into the women’s bathroom to get away from the attacker. Then Hyatt employees — including a bellman and a front desk worker — dragged him out.
Sulton said they “shoved his head into the ground so hard that he’s bleeding. Forehead, nose, and mouth.”
Sulton asserted to WDJT that Mitchell did nothing to instigate the incident. “There was no criminal conduct by D’Vontaye Mitchell,” he said.
It’s unclear why Mitchell was at the hotel or what happened before the guards pinned him down. The Milwaukee County medical examiner’s initial report said he was homeless, but a cousin told The Associated Press on Wednesday that was incorrect.
Crump said video recorded by a bystander and circulating on social media also shows excessive force was used by security guards to subdue Mitchell.
“In the video you see them with their knees on his back and neck,” Crump said, and the security guard appears to hit Mitchell in the head with an object. “You see them pull his shirt over his head, stifling not only his sound but, we believe, his breath.”
Shawn Moore told CBS News Tuesday that he witnessed part of the incident while walking to a nearby Walgreens to pick up some things for his son. He said he walked over to the hotel when he heard screaming.
The four guards didn’t get off Mitchell until police officers got to the hotel, Moore said, recalling that “one was holding his ankles, and you had the other three above the waist applying pressure holding him down.”
Mitchell was born and raised in Milwaukee, according to his first cousin Samantha Mitchell, 37, and any mental illness he may have had was undiagnosed.
“D’Vontaye loved to cook,” she said. “He was overprotective of his family, especially his younger cousins. He was a jokester. He really clung to a lot of our male cousins growing up, enjoying life together.”
GOP convention, George Floyd, racial justice
She said the family changed his funeral from Saturday to Thursday so its significance would not be overshadowed by the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which starts next week.
“We need to keep this in the light and not swept under the rug,” Mitchell said. “Regardless of the convention going on, this is still a matter that needs attention from everyone, no matter what party you are with. I want to see people speak about it while they’re here for the convention. That will say a lot.”
Mitchell’s death has become the most recent flashpoint in how the nation confronts race and what some see as the systemic brutality of Black people by members of law enforcement or others in authority, four years after the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
“Just because they have a big event coming up in Milwaukee, the killing of D’Vontaye Mitchell is just as important as anything else that’s going to happen in Milwaukee this month,” Crump told reporters Monday.
Crump also represented the family of Floyd, whose death spurred worldwide protests against racial violence and police brutality.
“Everybody in America, after George Floyd, should have trained their employees, especially security personnel, to not put knees on peoples’ backs and peoples’ necks,” Crump added.
Ever since Babe Ruth was waddling around the bases, there have been grim predictions about baseball’s future: Time has passed on the national pastime, too leisurely, too bucolic. Last year’s World Series TV ratings, and this season’s batting averages, both hit 50-year lows. Baseball, they say, is dying.
But never mind the current World Series between two of the game’s stalwarts, the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Want to feel better about baseball’s health? Just go to a Milwaukee Brewers game.
There, in Major League Baseball’s smallest market, cheese curds sweat under floodlights, frozen custard unspools into batting helmets, hometown Miller flows liberally, and on the stadium’s second level is the most authentic Milwaukee touch of all: the broadcaster they call “Mr. Baseball.”
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In six undistinguished seasons as a catcher in the majors, Bob Uecker never played an inning for the Brewers. But during half a century as the team’s play-by-play announcer, he’s become equal parts mayor and mascot in the city of his birth, all the while declining offers from bigger markets – laying off pitches, as it were.
In the 1980s Yankees owner George Steinbrenner tried to recruit Uecker. “Steinbrenner sent a couple of people out to talk to me about joining the Yankees,” he said, “but I loved Milwaukee. Born and raised here!”
Uecker began his major league career in 1962 with the Milwaukee Braves before the franchise moved to Atlanta. “I was the first player from Milwaukee to ever be signed by the Braves,” he said. “I was also the first Milwaukee native to be sent to the minor leagues by the Braves!”
If Uecker’s on-field inadequacies hampered his playing career, they’ve provided some of his best material in a lengthy and lucrative second career as an actor and comedian. Employing a bone-dry wit, he made more than 40 appearances on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.”
He said, “I did ‘Tonight Shows,’ you know, whenever they wanted. I would leave here on a Sunday afternoon, fly to L.A., do the Monday night show, take a red-eye back here, and be here for Tuesday’s game.”
Johnny Carson: “Give me, fast as you can, all the teams you’ve ever played with.”
Uecker: “Braves, Cardinals, Phillies, and the Braves again. Then, in June, I was with …”
The Carson guest spots led to a series of notable TV commercials, as well as a starring sitcom role, and perhaps most memorably as Harry Doyle, the perpetually blitzed announcer in the “Major League” movies. This past summer, at Milwaukee’s American Family Field, “Harry Doyle Bobblehead Night” brought the Uecker faithful out in force.
Asked his favorite “Bob Uecker line,” he replied, “‘Juuuuust a bit outside.’ That’s where my wife put me a lotta times!”
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Before serving 16 years as baseball’s commissioner, Bud Selig owned the Brewers, and, in 1971, hired Uecker, misguidedly, as a scout. Selig said it is “legitimately true” that Uecker wasn’t cut out to be a scout. “There were mashed potatoes on the damned scouting report. I couldn’t read it. He couldn’t read it,” he said.
So, Selig moved Uecker to the Brewers’ broadcast booth later that year.
Today there’s even a statue honoring Uecker, where else? In the very last row of the upper deck, behind a pole.
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But for all the stardom, all the gigs and gags, the late-night-laughs at his own expense, Uecker still fancies himself a player, says Brewers pitcher Brandon Woodruff: “He lets us know about his catching days. He’s one of us. He’s part of the team. And I think that’s why we embrace him so much, is that he’s on this ride with us. And that’s what makes it cool.”
According to Uecker, he has a bond with the players on the field: “I played the game. So, I know how hard it is. I know how tough it is to play this game. The game celebrations, when we win, that’s a big part of it, man, to be able to walk into that clubhouse and be with ’em.”
But baseball is cruel, and in Milwaukee, celebrations are short-lived. Earlier this month, with the Brewers just two outs from winning the National League Wild Card Series, the New York Mets came from behind on a dramatic home run.
On the radio, Uecker didn’t hide the hurt: “I’m tellin’ ya, that one … had some sting on it.”
The Brewers’ first World Series title will have to wait.
There’s speculation that the heartbreaking loss may have marked Uecker’s last game as an announcer. But as his 91st birthday nears, the man they call “Mr. Baseball” told us he doesn’t want to imagine his life without it.
“I don’t know what I would do, you know, with no more. If I think of no more baseball for me, I don’t know what that would be like, you know?” Uecker said. “I got out of high school and I joined the Army. And I signed a baseball contact. That’s been it, really!”
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Story produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Lauren Barnello.
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On a trip to New York City earlier this month to appear on “Saturday Night Live” for the first time since 1983, Stevie Nicks said she was scared to death. She said her first reaction when she got the call to appear on “SNL” was, “Absolutely not. Because I was terrified to do it, ’cause it goes out live!”
But she did appear on “SNL,” and her performance of “The Lighthouse” brought down the house.
She says the inspiration for her latest song, a rallying cry for women’s rights, struck a few months after Roe v. Wade was overturned, and it took her less than a day to write the song and record it.
Smith asked, “It takes some courage to step into the waters of the abortion debate. Why take the risk?”
“Because everybody kept saying, ‘Well, somebody has to do something. Somebody has to say something,'” replied Nicks. “And I’m like, ‘Well, I have a platform. I tell a good story. So maybe I should try to do something.’ I was also there. I was, been there, done that.“
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In the late ’70s, Nicks was on top of the world with the legendary band Fleetwood Mac. She’d broken up with her longtime partner and Fleetwood Mac bandmate Lindsey Buckingham, and she was romantically involved with Don Henley of The Eagles when she found out she was pregnant, and decided that, as a touring musician, being a mother was not in the cards.
In 1979 she terminated the pregnancy. “In my younger life, I’d already decided I didn’t want to have somebody have their feelings hurt all the time, and like, ‘When are you comin’ back?’ ‘Well, I don’t know. I’ll be back when I get back,’ you know?” Nicks said. “And not even having any idea how big that Fleetwood Mac was going to get in the future, you know? And this is, like, super personal and weird, so you know … you can edit this out if necessary.”
“I appreciate your sharing this story though,” said Smith.
“Well, and it’s a good story, too. I tell a good story!” Nicks said. “I got pregnant. And it was like, Why? I have an IUD. I am totally protected. I have a great gynecologist. How come this has happened? What the heck?“
“So you took all the precautions?”
“Yes. And I’m like, This can’t be happening. Fleetwood Mac is three years in. And it’s big. And we’re going into our third album. It was like, Oh no, no, no, no, no, no.“
Nicks said it would have “destroyed” Fleetwood Mac if she had had the baby: “Absolutely, because many reasons. I would’ve, like, tried my best to get through, you know, being in the studio every single day expecting a child. But mostly, having a child with Don Henley would not have gone over big in Fleetwood Mac, with Lindsey and me – we had been broken up for two or three years. It would’ve been a nightmare scenario for me to live through.”
Fleetwood Mac was a collection of stars, but Stevie Nicks was front-and-center. She was the one who wrote the band’s only #1 single in the U.S., “Dreams,” a song that is still a hit today on streaming.
But if “Dreams” is about heartache and vulnerability, Nicks’ new song is just the opposite: it’s about fighting for the same reproductive rights that she had.
Smith asked, “There are people who criticize your choice, condemn your choice. Anything you want to say to them?”
“I’d like to know, so are you just the few guys who are making the decisions for us?” Nicks replied.
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She said the choice, ultimately, “was mine. And you know what? If people want to be mad at me, be mad at me. I don’t care. Had I made the other choice, had I gone the other way, I’d have been a great mom. I went this way, and I’ve done great.”
Nicks would go on to new heights as a solo artist, becoming the first woman to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, twice.
Of course Nicks has had her share of heartache as well. The woman she called her musical soulmate, Christine McVie, died in 2022, and Nicks was shattered.
“I wanted to go and step in, sit on her bed, and hold her hand, and sing ‘Touched By An Angel’ to her until I was sure she heard it,” she said. “And I didn’t get to. And I didn’t get to say goodbye to her.”
Nicks now ends her shows with a moving tribute to her best friend. She sings, but can’t bring herself to watch. “We have a really beautiful montage of her and me. I never turn around and look. I can’t, ’cause I’ll start to sob. And if I start to sob, then I won’t be able to finish the song. So, I just don’t look at it.”
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Nicks says that, although McVie is gone, she feels her presence with her all the time. She wears a necklace containing some of McVie’s ashes. “A little bit of her,” Nicks said. “But as important as that is, she’s in my heart,” she said.
Nicks says she really doesn’t care whether her new song, “The Lighthouse,” is a hit or not; she just wants people to listen. “Poets write what they write, and poets should not be censored. Writers should not be censored. This song should not be censored. It should go out into the world and do what it’s gonna do, maybe change some minds. There is a God, and God gave me this talent to sing and write and dance. So, I’m doing my job.”
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Story produced by John D’Amelio. Editor: Steven Tyler.
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