African American Teen's Death In Juvenile Centre Causes Outrage

The death of a teenage African American at a juvenile delinquency center has caused fresh outrage across the US.

The teenager, as displayed in a viral video, was choked by personnel of the center where the teen, Cornelius Fredericks, 16, was housed.

Cornelius died two days after he was pinned to the ground by a member of staff of the Lakeside Academy, Michigan for lobbing a sandwich at another colleague at the cafeteria.

Immediately after throwing the sandwich, Fredericks could be seen in the video tackled to the ground by some personnel, pinning him to the ground, slipping into unconsciousness after 10 minutes.

First aid resuscitative measures were taken before the ambulance was called.

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Fredericks' death comes on the heel of the protest raging across the United States over the deaths of African Americans by police officers, sparked by the death of George Floyd who was pinned to the ground by police officers who accused him of using counterfeit money at a store.

Explaining the trend of such practices at the Lakeside Academy, Fredericks' family lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger, said that “suffocation is a regular practice… as a form of discipline,” at the academy.

He added that the staff members who pinned Fredericks to the ground “deprived him of oxygen and his brain suffered irreversible damage.

“Cornelius’s scream of ‘I can’t breathe’ was not enough to get the staff members to stop the excessive restraint,” Fieger continued.

“The excessive use of restraints and the lack of concern for Cornelius’s life draw an eerily similar comparison to that of George Floyd’s death.”