He and Mr. Chipman had lengthy discussions about their identities as Black males rising up in America.
In a photograph posted on his Facebook web page, Mr. Otieno posed along with his fist raised in entrance of the toppled Jefferson Davis Memorial in Richmond, which were tagged with a rainbow of protest graffiti all over the Black Lives Matter demonstrations of 2020.
On Jan. 7, 2021, the day after the U.S. Capitol used to be raided by means of an indignant mob of Trump supporters, Mr. Otieno wrote on Facebook about “two justices in America, one for us and one for the white folks.”
Mr. Mehretab mentioned that, like his personal folks, his buddy Ivor had steadily come to be informed of his new nation’s entrenched racial injustices, a lesson that used to be now not transparent from in a foreign country. “One thing they have realized is, like, you won’t be trusted, they’ll take someone else’s word over your word here,” Mr. Mehretab mentioned. “They understand the system itself is sort of against African Americans.”
As the years went by means of, Mr. Otieno and his mom realized to reside along with his psychological sickness. There have been lengthy stretches of steadiness, Ms. Ouko mentioned, when he used to be taking his drugs and seeing his physician. But there have been flare-ups, too — occasions when Ms. Ouko would take him to a medical institution, and Mr. Otieno would want to be restrained.
“He said to me, ‘Mama, why do they have to tie me to a bed?’” she remembered.
Sometimes those episodes came about when he used to be along with her at house, in a quiet subdivision of single-family homes out of doors Richmond. The police would come, together with a scientific group, she mentioned; they’d take him to the medical institution, the place he can be handled.
According to the Henrico County police, that is kind of what came about at the afternoon of March 2, once they replied to a choice from a neighbor a couple of “suspicious situation,” simplest to be reassured by means of Mr. Otieno and his family members that it used to be a psychological well being drawback, now not a legal topic.
Ms. Ouko had spotted some adjustments in her son that week, together with that he were uncharacteristically arranging issues in the home. On the morning of March 3, she known as his physician to invite {that a} group be despatched to take him to the medical institution once more.