Footage released late Friday by authorities in Sedgwick County, Kansas shows employees of a county juvenile center holding a 17-year-old boy on the floor of a cell for more than half an hour, just two days before his death
, Lofton was booked into the Sedgwick County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center on Sept. 26 after his father called to ask for a mental health assessment. The sheriff’s office says Lofton refused voluntary treatment and resisted arrest, and was taken to the juvenile center on suspicion of assaulting a police officer., which spans more than an hour and a half, reveals some of what happened in the time after officers dropped Lofton off at the facility.
But Bennett declined to press charges against anyone involved, claiming the juvenile center workers were acting in self-defense and therefore immune from prosecution. He added that none of the employees said Lofton indicated he was struggling to breathe. The NAACP had previously called on the county to file charges, saying that Lofton's death, ‘“whether negligent or intentional,” was “unconscionable and inhumane.”