"All of the original coverage was that my brother was running wildly through the street, he was darting in and out of traffic," Okobi’s sister, Ebele, said in a recent interview. "But what we saw is my brother walking on the sidewalk."
Ebele says the footage also refutes the description of her brother’s behavior during the arrest.
"When he was stopped, there was no assault at all, and when they tase him there's no assault," she said.
"The whole thing seems strange to me. Why you would tase someone who didn't represent a physical threat and wasn't doing anything?"
"They were so afraid of an unarmed bystander that they had to use the kind of force that turned out to be lethal. But they expect the person who's being attacked to be completely calm and understand," Ebele said.
Civil rights attorney John Burris said he intends to file a civil lawsuit on behalf of the Okobi family in federal court in the near future.
"The most significant thing to me is that Okobi was a very healthy man at the time, he was not under any influence of any drugs, legal or otherwise," Burris said. "And there's some real questions about the basis for the initial stop, related to why they were using force when they were."
Okobi’s family also takes issue with the sheriff’s office's accounting of when he died. The press release reported that the suspect was taken into custody, sent to the hospital and later declared dead.
The county coroner recorded the time of death as 2:17 p.m. based on hospital records. But Ebele believes the video footage actually captured the moment of her brother’s death.
"They’re on top of him and he's on the ground and they're saying 'Stay on him! Stay on him! Stay on him! Stay on him!'" Ebele said. "Then all of a sudden, 'It's a crime scene.' And then you can hear them say, 'OK, we need crime scene tape.'"
Ebele said they propped up her brother with his head hanging forward.
"Nobody tried to revive him. There was no CPR, nothing," she said. "They treated him like a dog."
Okobi’s family initially thought he may have been in psychological distress at the time of his arrest, but after viewing the video footage compilation, Ebele said there’s not evidence of that.
"His mental illness had actually absolutely nothing to do with why he was stopped," Ebele said. "All you saw was a man walking down the street. The only difference is that he happened to be black."
Okobi graduated with a degree in business administration from Atlanta's Morehouse College. His family said he began to experience mental illness in 2009, but held a series of jobs, including working as a truck driver for Home Depot until January 2018. [an assumption here from statist, racist suspect media is that running from cops who are trying to kill you is crazy.]
The other officers involved in Okobi’s arrest are John DeMartini, Alyssa Lorenzatti, Bryan Watt and Sgt. David Weidner. They are all back at work, according to Public Information Officer Rosemerry Blankswade.