Two New York state correction officers have been indicted on murder charges, and eight more for a variety of other charges, for the beating death of Messiah Nantwi in an upstate prison during a wildcat strike last month.
The officers, Jonah Levi and Caleb Blair, were charged with murder Wednesday, accused of beating and stomping Nantwi’s head for several minutes at Mid-State Correction Facility in Marcy, N.Y. on March 1. Blair is also accused of beating him in a holding cell in the prison’s infirmary.
And after the 22-year-old Harlem resident’s death, Levi and a correction sergeant, Francis Chandler, pleaded with his fellow correction officers to keep their names off the official report — which they did, according to prosecutors in the Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office.
Chandler ordered another correction officer to grab a makeshift weapon from an earlier assault and give it to him, and he asked for a “volunteer” to say he found the weapon on Nantwi, according to the indictment. Correction officer Thomas Eck volunteered to be that volunteer, prosecutors allege.
A day later, the 10 defendants gathered at a local diner called “Raspberries” to concoct a “false narrative” that no one did anything wrong and Chandler and Levi hadn’t used any force against Nantwi.
Nantwi was in prison for a gun possession case stemming from a 2021 incident where NYPD officers shot him up to 27 times during a police chase after they believed he fired at them during an encounter over paint cans and graffiti.
He was also awaiting trial for two murders roughly 27 hours apart in Harlem around Easter 2023.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
