source: Liverpool Echo
published: 15 December 2019
In the hours before the death of 18-year-old Mzee Mohammed Daley , his worried dad described “seeing the fear in my boy’s eyes.”
Mzee , who had long struggled with mental health difficulties, was at the start of a terrifying descent into the psychotic episode that killed him, on the warm evening of July 13, 2016, in Liverpool ONE shopping centre.
For three years speculation and rumour surrounded the very public death of the student, who dreamed of opening a Jamaican-style eatery in the city.
At a time when the Black Lives Matter movement, protesting police killings of black citizens in America, had sparked a global conversation, the image of a black teenager dying in police custody meant a forensic level of scrutiny was needed to get to the bottom of the tragedy.
But no evidence of racial bias emerged, and an Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) investigation found that Merseyside Police officers had not breached guidelines when they restrained Mzee.
While police officers involved in the incident withstood three years of speculation, Mzee’s family also endured rumours and aspersions about what led to their son’s death.
On Wednesday, a visibly upset inquest jury drew a line under a tragedy that left so many people devastated – finding that Mzee had died of “natural causes.”
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