Cyril Wecht On Freddie Gray’s Likely Cause of Death

Forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht has been around the block a few times. Two minutes and 31 seconds into this typically tedious, CNN broadcast, Dr. Wecht ventures the following with conviction, about the Freddie Gray murder. I paraphrase:

Legs shackled and hands cuffed, placed in a prone position, face down—a position that has been banned for decades, claims Wecht—how, pray tell, did Freddie Gray run around, banging himself against the van’s interior?

The victim is yelling and screaming for help. His body is inert and the van is moving. Right there is the velocity needed to create the force for the injuries! Those injuries are not spontaneous pathological fractures; the injuries came as the body flapped back and forth, breaking the vertebrae in the neck and eventually severing the spinal cord.

Indubitably, the injuries were sustained by the police by their stopping Gray. Gray did not sustain those spontaneously. Also quite possible, says Wecht, and as I’ve hypothesized, the initial injuries were produced when police compressed and leaned into Gray’s back, to be aggravated by the flopping around in the van.