Emily Brown
Warning: This article contains graphic images of violence and injury which some readers may find distressing
The FBI has confirmed it is looking into the death of a prison inmate after bodycam footage showed prison officers beating him just hours earlier.
Inmate Robert Brooks, 43, had just been transferred from the Mohawk Correctional Facility to the Marcy Correctional Facility in upstate New York when the beating took place on December 9.
He had been serving a 12-year sentence for first-degree assault and, for reasons that are currently unclear, had been taken to the prison's medical facility after arriving at Marcy.
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Bodycam footage from the prison shows Brooks sitting on an examination table, where one prison officer appears to place something in his mouth. Multiple officers are also seen beating Brooks, striking him repeatedly in the face and groin.
One hits Brooks in the stomach with a shoe, and the inmate is at one point lifted up by his neck and dropped back on to the table.
Brooks died the day after the beating, with preliminary examinations determining his cause of death to be 'asphyxia due to compression of the neck'.
The final results of Brooks’ autopsy are still pending, the Associated Press reports.
The bodycam footage was released on Friday (December 27) by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has opened an investigation into Brooks' death.
James said she did not 'take lightly the release of this video', but explained she chose to share it because she has a 'responsibility and duty to provide the Brooks family, their loved ones, and all New Yorkers with transparency and accountability'.
Following the release of the footage, the FBI has confirmed that it is looking into the case.
In a statement to TMZ, the federal agency said: “The FBI Albany Field Office and the Department of Justice are reviewing the facts and circumstances surrounding the death of Robert L. Brooks to determine the appropriate federal response. As this is an ongoing review, we are not able to comment further at this time.”
Elizabeth Mazur, a lawyer representing the Brooks family, has said that the bodycam footage captures the 'horrific and extreme nature of the deadly attack'.
"He deserved to live, and everyone else living in Marcy Correctional Facility deserves to know they do not have to live in fear of violence at the hands of prison staff," Mazur said.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she was 'outraged and horrified' by the 'senseless killing', and said 13 correctional officers and a nurse implicated in the attack will face termination.