<p>SEATTLE &mdash; The Washington state attorney general on Thursday filed murder charges against two police officers in the death of Manuel Ellis, a Black man who died after telling the Tacoma officers who were restraining him that he couldn’t breathe.</p>
<p>Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement he charged officers Christopher Burbank and Matthew Collins with second-degree murder and Timothy Rankine with first-degree manslaughter. The charges were filed in Pierce County Superior Court.</p>
<p>Ellis, 33, died on March 3, 2020, in handcuffs from lack of oxygen caused by being restrained. The Pierce County medical examiner called his death a homicide. </p>
<p>His final words — “I can’t breathe, sir!” — were captured by a home security camera. The medical examiner’s report also listed methamphetamine intoxication and heart disease as factors in his death.</p>
<p>Ellis’ death — just weeks before George Floyd’s death under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer triggered a nationwide reckoning on race and policing — made Ellis’ name synonymous with pleas for justice at protests in the Pacific Northwest.</p>