The last of four hotel employees charged in connection with D’Vontaye Mitchell’s The homicide victim was arrested Friday, more than five weeks after he and the others allegedly attacked the black man as they tried to remove him from a Milwaukee hotel.
Herbert Williamson was taken into custody three days after he and his three co-defendants were charged with involvement in the premeditated murder of Mitchell, who died June 30 at a Hyatt Regency hotel, according to Milwaukee County jail records.
Two of the hotel employees – Devin Johnson-Carson, 23, and Todd Erickson, 60 – were taken into custody on Thursday. Johnson-Carson was working at the front desk and Erickson was on duty as security manager at the hotel on the afternoon of June 30 when the altercation occurred, authorities said.
Samantha Mitchell / AP
Williamson, a bellboy, and the three others were charged after prosecutors reviewed video showing them pouncing on Mitchell as they tried to drag him from the hotel lobby before he died.
Williamson, 52, was accused of aiding and abetting murder along with hotel security guard Todd Erickson, 60; front desk clerk Devin Johnson-Carson, 23; and security guard Brandon Turner, 35. If convicted, each faces up to 15 years and nine months in prison.
Aimbridge Hospitality, the company that operates the hotel, had previously said it had fired several employees involved in Mitchell’s death.
“We are saddened and shocked by what happened to D’vontaye Mitchell at the Hyatt Regency Milwaukee and extend our deepest condolences to his family and loved ones,” Aimbridge Hospitality said in a statement.
According to online court records, Williamson, Turner and Johnson-Carson are black, while Erickson is white.
Mitchell’s family Lawyers compared his death to the murder of George Floyd, a black man who died in 2020 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on his neck for about nine minutes.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is part of a team of lawyers representing Mitchell’s family, said a video taken by a bystander and circulating on social media shows security guards pressing their knees on Mitchell’s back and neck.
According to a criminal complaint Mitchell ran into the hotel on June 30 and entered a women’s restroom. A clerk dragged him outside and held him on his stomach along with the other three for eight or nine minutes while Mitchell gasped for air.
The county medical examiner concluded that Mitchell died of “restraint asphyxia,” noting that he might have survived if staff had allowed him to turn onto his side, the criminal complaint states.
Mitchell died of “restraint asphyxia and the toxic effects of cocaine and methamphetamine,” the county medical examiner said in a report released last week. The Milwaukee District Attorney’s Office said earlier this month that the 43-year-old’s death is being investigated as a homicide.
Erickson was being held on $50,000 bail and Turner on $30,000 bail after both made their first court appearances this week, records show. Preliminary hearings are scheduled for Aug. 19. Johnson-Carson had an initial court hearing scheduled for Friday. The date of Williamson’s initial hearing is not clear from records.
According to prison records, all four were still in custody on Friday morning.
An attorney for Erickson did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday. Matt Last, an attorney representing Turner, told CBS News in a statement, “We are disappointed in the District Attorney’s decision to charge Mr. Turner with murder. In the coming weeks, we will work to prove Mr. Turner’s innocence in this matter.”
No attorneys for Williamson or Johnson-Carson were listed in the court filing.
