Tyre Nichols’ mom describes seeing son in hospital

Tyre Nichols’ mom described the excruciating moment she saw her savagely battered son in the hospital, knowing immediately that he was “already gone” — as she accused Memphis cops of initially trying to cover up how they fatally beat him “to a pulp.”

RowVaughn Wells told CNN Friday that officers wildly downplayed her 29-year-old son’s injuries and then refused to tell her where he was being treated after the Jan. 7 beating by officers that Memphis’ top cop concedes is “unconscionable” and involved “acts that defy humanity.”

She found him around eight hours after learning he’d been busted — and only because a doctor called at 4 a.m. to find out why she was not at her son’s hospital bedside after he’d gone into cardiac arrest and his kidneys started failing.

“When my husband and I got to the hospital and I saw my son — he was already gone,” Wells said of Nichols, who “would have been a vegetable” even if he had survived.

“They had beat him to a pulp … They actually just beat the crap out of him,” she said.

“He had bruises all over him. His head was swollen like a watermelon. His neck was busting because of the swelling. They broke his neck. My son’s nose look like a ‘S,’” she said of the injuries photographed by her husband, Nichols’ stepdad Rodney Wells.

“So when I saw that, I knew my son was gone then,” she said of her nightmare.

“I don’t have my baby — I’ll never have my baby again,” she said, saying she most misses her son’s “beautiful smile” and “beautiful soul.”

“No mother should have to go through this. No mother,” she said, saying she “never thought in a million years” it would be her.

The five Memphis cops blamed for the beating were on Thursday charged with murder, nearly three weeks after Nichols’ death.

Officials have spent the last few days preparing the public for the release of bodycam footage late Friday that Police Chief Cerelyn Davis called “unconscionable” and “about the same if not worse’’ than the infamous video of Rodney King being beaten by Los Angeles cops in 1991.

Wells said she had yet to see the soon-to-be-released police video — but her attorney, Benjamin Crump, said that Nichols’ last words were three “gut-wrenching screams for his mom.” 

“That was my baby — he was a mama’s boy. That boy loved me to death,” Wells said, saying her son had her name tattooed on his arm.

“People don’t know what those five police officers did to our family,” she said — saying they also “brought shame to the black community.”

“I just feel sorry for them,” she said of the cops who “did something horrendous.”

“Where was the humanity? They beat my son like a piñata,” she said.

She said her son had Crohn’s disease and “weighed a buck fifty” despite being 6-foot-3.

“And those men, if you combine their weights, it was over a thousand pounds beating and beating a 150-pound person to death. Because that’s what they did — they beat my son to death,” she said.

“He cried out for me, because I’m his mother, and that’s what he was trying to [do], to get home to safety.”

Wells broke down as she recalled how that day her “stomach started hurting so bad” — which she now believes was her “feeling my son’s pain when they were beating him to death.”

Wells praised the top cop for her “excellent” response in recent days in swiftly charging her officers and vowing openness, which Crump called the “blueprint” for such cases.

However, Nichols’ mom said the developments this week are a far cry from how the Memphis force acted after the diabolical beating.

She said was immediately confused when cops “banged on” her door late Jan. 7 to tell her that her 29-year-old son had been busted for DUI.

“DUI? My son don’t drink like that, what do you mean, DUI?” she replied.

They then told her that they “had to pepper spray and Tase him,” with no mention of the minutes-long beating that would lead to murder charges.

Instead, the officers tried to blame Nichols for having “superhuman energy,” asking his mom if he was a drug user, she told Don Lemon.

“What they were describing was not my son. So I was very confused,” she said of the deadly confrontation she later found out was just a few blocks from her home.

Police later claimed Nichols was pulled over for reckless driving and not for DUI.

However, during a CNN appearance early Friday, the Memphis’ top cop said the footage of the incident provided “no proof” that Nichols violated traffic laws prior to being stopped.

Wells also said the officers downplayed the seriousness of her son’s injuries, suggesting he was being treated but would soon be discharged and booked.

“I asked if I could go to the hospital. They told me, ‘No,’” she recalled.

She and her husband, Rodney Wells, left to try and find him, but when they asked cops where her son was “they said nearby,” she said.

“Nearby? What is nearby? I got nothing from them,” she recalled.

“Now that I’m actually putting things together, I believe they were trying to cover it up,” the heartbroken mom confessed.

“I’m still trying to understand all of this and wrap my head around this,” she told Lemon of her “nightmare.”

“This is very difficult — this is very difficult,” she said. “I don’t have my baby — I’ll never have my baby again,” she said.

“I just feel like my son was sent here on assignment from God, and his assignment is over — it’s over — and he was sent back home,” she said, hoping that “some good and some positive” could come out of his death.

“I’ll never cook for my son again, I’ll never get a hug from my son again — I won’t get anything from my son again, just because some officers decided they wanted to do harm to my son,” she said.

Wells wanted the cops charged with first-degree murder, but accepted the lesser second-degree ones because “those are the charges that I feel will stick.”

“We don’t care what color the officer is — we want bad officers taken off the force,” she said.

“But by them being black, they hurt the black community,” she said.