One of the officers charged with second-degree murder in connection to the brutal caught-on-camera fatal beating of Tyre Nichols once pulled a gun on two suspects and threatened to shoot them in the face, the men said.
Glenn Harris, 24, and Demarius Hervey, 27, told NBC News that former Memphis Police Officer Emmitt Martin III approached them at a gas station in August 2020.
The men — who say they are brothers — told the outlet they had been smoking marijuana and were in possession of an unregistered gun at the time and had tried to flee.
Harris and Hervey reportedly said they had tried to flee in Harris’ car, but crashed it after eluding cops for about two miles.
When Martin caught up with them, he pinned Harris on the ground, pointed his gun at his head, and said “I’ll blow your face off,” the man reportedly claimed.
“I got scared,” Harris told the network. “When I got out of the car and tried to run, that’s when Officer Emmitt grabbed me. He slammed me on the ground and pulled his gun out.”
Hervey said he was also threatened at gunpoint, and the men’s mother Stacy Harris corroborated the account.
“He told me [Martin] threw him to the ground and put the gun to him and told him he would ‘blow his f–king head off,'” she reportedly said.
Harris did not file a complaint because his main concern was getting out of jail, but his lawyer Arthur Horne said the suspect did share the same story with him.
“He said an officer pulled a gun out and held it to his head and called him the N-word,” Horne reportedly said. “I told him he could go to internal affairs, but they probably wouldn’t do anything.”
Harris was accused of possession of a handgun while under the influence, reckless driving, driving with a suspended/revoked/canceled license, leaving the scene of an accident and evading arrest, and no charges were filed against Hervey, according to the report.
“He was in the wrong, he wasn’t supposed to pull a gun on me,” Harris reportedly said.
Harris told NBC he realized Martin was the cop who had threatened to kill him after officials released security and bodycam video of the Jan. 7 beating fatal beating of Nichols, 29.
Nichols died three days after the prolonged attack, which involved a baton, fists, kicks, pepper spray and electroshocks. He had been pulled over for reckless driving and appeared to try to comply with police orders before taking off on foot after being tased and pepper-sprayed.
When cops caught up with Nichols about a half mile away, they mercilessly beat the unarmed man for about three minutes. Three responding emergency service workers were fired for refusing to render aid to him for more than 15 minutes after the beating.
Read more of The Post’s coverage of Tyre Nichols’ beating death
Martin and four other cops involved were fired 10 days later and brought up on murder charges on Jan. 26 in connection with the deadly beatdown. Another officer and two sheriff’s deputies were also relieved of duty.
Footage of the incident appeared to contradict police claims that Nichols was threatening them or reaching for their guns, and the video sparked nationwide protests reminiscent of the nationwide police brutality and systematic racism reckoning of 2020.
Nichols and all the officers involved are black men, but Ben Crumpp, the lawyer for Nichols’ family, has compared his death to Rodney King, Michael Brown and George Floyd — black suspects that were killed by white officers.
All of the accused former officers were part of the anti-crime street unit SCORPION, which was shut down by cops in the wake of Nichols’ death.
One of the ex-cops, Demetrius Haley, allegedly once beat up an inmate when he served as a corrections officer. Former prisoner Cordarlrius Sledge told The Post last week that Haley and another CO had punched him in the face and slammed him face-first into a sink at the Shelby County Division of Corrections in 2015 while searching for a cellphone.