Michael Broady Called 911 From Reform, Alabama, and the Body Camera Outlived the Partial Settlement

Michael Broady Jr. rief 911 im August 2021 aus Reform, Alabama, an und sagte einem Dispatcher, dass jemand versuchte, ihn zu töten. Beamte der reformpolizeiabteilung, des sheriffbüros des Pickens County und der Carrollton Police Department antworteten. Sie hielten ihn auf ausstehende haftbefehle, darunter eine kinderunterstützung aus Lamar County. Er wurde am Helipad des Carrollton Hospital für tot erklärt. Fünf Jahre später ist die Bundesklage nicht mehr ein Block von Angeklagten. Zwei Beamte haben sich niedergelassen. Zwei Abgeordnete haben dies nicht getan, und das Vermittlungsdatum, das diese Spaltung testen sollte, ist bereits ohne öffentliche Entlassung vergangen.

Vereinigte Staaten Die Bezirksrichterin Annemarie Carney Axon unterzeichnete am 28. Mai 2026 einen Befehl und wies die Ansprüche gegen die Reformoffizierin Kallenna Homan und Austin Moss nach dem Nachlass mit Vorurteilen ab mit ihnen abgerechnet. Die Bedingungen wurden nicht freigegeben. AL.com, unter Berufung auf einen späten Mai gemeinsamen Statusbericht, identifiziert Moss als Gordo Polizist. WBRCs späterer Aufsatz beschrieb ihn als Stellvertreter des Sheriffs von Pickens County. Beide Beschreibungen können nicht die Agentur sein, für die er in dieser Nacht gearbeitet hat. Was die anordnung festlegt, ist, dass diese beiden angeklagten draußen sind. Ansprüche gegen Pickens County Abgeordneten Brian Herd und Taylor Gregory blieb auf dem docket. Eine Mediation vor Richter Grey M. Borden wurde am 30. Juli 2026 für 9 Uhr im Gericht der Vereinigten Staaten von Hugo L. Black in Birmingham eingestellt. Borden befahl beiden Seiten, eine vertrauliche Zusammenfassung der Fakten, den geschätzten Wert der Forderungen und den Status früherer Gespräche einzureichen. Bis Ende September 2026 hat die lokale Berichterstattung keine Anordnung zur Entlassung von Herd oder Gregory veröffentlicht.

What the cameras recorded before anyone settled

The recordings run about 40 minutes from a Pickens deputy and about 30 from a Reform officer. Broady talks with the officers. Then he is taken to the ground. Audio catches shouted commands, repeated Taser cycles, and an officer yelling, „Let go of my Taser.“ The family’s lawyers say he was shocked while prone and handcuffed. The footage later shows him dragged and carried to a cruiser. As the door fights shut, another Taser cycle appears to fire inside the car. AL.com published a condensed clip in December 2025. The longer files came from the family’s lawyers.

After officers had Broady in the back seat, Homan is heard on the tape saying, „All you had to do was hand the cell phone over. Gosh, that was a wrestle.“ Body-camera audio also captures Broady dialing 911 a second time from his own phone while cuffed, telling the dispatcher police had not arrived even as officers stood a few feet away. His sister, DeQuita Denise Broady, the estate’s personal representative, who has also been identified in interviews as Dequita Manuel, put the question the video forces: „He was handcuffed. It took five of you to do that — and none of you thought to stop?“ AL.com und ABC 33/40 documented the tapes. His daughter, identified by AL.com as Makyleigh Hollinger, said, „He did nothing to deserve that. Not at all. It was unprovoked.“

An autopsy that refused to pick a winner

The Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences listed both cause and manner of death as undetermined. The examiner found two Taser barbs in the torso, blunt-force abrasions, and an acute fracture of the left hyoid bone with internal hemorrhage and no external neck wound. That pattern, the report said, suggested „a relatively broad compressive force“ to the front of the neck. How much it contributed to death was left open. Toxicology showed methamphetamine at 2,800 ng/mL, described as a potentially fatal range, plus amphetamine and THC.

Defense lawyers treat the toxicology as the case. The family’s lawyers treat the hyoid fracture, the allegation that a flashlight was used against his neck, and the Taser cycles on a cuffed man as the case. The examiner left the door open to revisit the finding if more facts arrived. The death is still not classified as a homicide on paper. That undetermined box is why both sides can still talk as if the video belongs to them. A settlement with two officers does not rewrite the autopsy. It removes two names from a caption.

Who is still answering the complaint

DeQuita Denise Broady filed Broady v. Herd et al. in 2023 in the Northern District of Alabama, Western Division, Case No. 7:23-cv-01097. Early defendants included Deputy Herd, Reform Police Chief Kenny Young, the City of Reform, the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office, the Town of Carrollton, and the Town of Gordo. Two Carrollton officers were later dropped. Pickens County itself was voluntarily dismissed in February 2024. A corrected Fourth Amended Complaint filed in November 2025 added detail from the newly reviewed video: overlapping Taser cycles while Broady was prone and cuffed, a flashlight used against his neck, a Taser fired into the cruiser, a door slammed on his head, kicks on the ground, and failing oxygen gear at the jail sallyport. Those are allegations. They have not been proven at trial.

Attorney Johnathan Austin told AL.com in July 2026, „This is just one step closer to getting justice and answers for the family that we represent. Now we know what happened to him and now we’re seeking justice.“ He also said, „We know there’s no amount of money that’s going to bring this loved one back but at least we can hold them accountable and hopefully in the future they will change the way they are responding to individuals like Mr. Broady so the next person won’t lose their life.“ Montgomery attorney J. Randall McNeill, who represents Herd and Gregory, told AL.com his clients deny wrongdoing and that „mediation does not equate an admission.“ WBRC und WVUA 23 reported the partial deal. Settlement amounts were not made public.

What the officers say the tape leaves out

McNeill has argued that Broady gained control of a Taser and used it on officers, and that the methamphetamine level was dangerously high. Counsel for the Reform officer denied the allegations and said the officer did not know of mental-health or substance issues during the call. Austin told ABC 33/40 the opposite frame: „This is not a case about someone threatening officers or the public — it is about a man who called the police for help and, despite officers knowing he was in crisis, was met with extreme force rather than restraint or de-escalation.“ Co-counsel Richard Rice has tied the file to other deaths in the same county.

Judge L. Scott Coogler’s March 2024 order cut some supervisor and failure-to-train theories and let excessive-force and bystander claims against the officers who used force proceed. That is why Herd and Gregory still matter after Homan and Moss bought their way off the caption. The Axon dismissal did not touch the remaining counts.

Three Black men dead in one small county

Pickens County has fewer than 20,000 people. Between 2019 and 2021 three Black men died in police encounters there. Wallace Wilder was shot during an April 2019 wellness check. Glenn Foster Jr., a former New Orleans Saints lineman, died in December 2021 after a chase in Reform. An autopsy in Foster’s death found strangulation. Austin and Rice wrote Governor Kay Ivey that the pattern under Sheriff Todd Hall included a complete lack of transparency and that the race of all three men was not a coincidence.

In December 2023, Reform officer Dana Elmore was accused of repeatedly using a Taser on Micah Washington, who was changing a tire near his aunt’s house. That file produced a $20 million federal suit after video surfaced in late 2024. Broady sits in the same stack of Taser-and-restraint cases, not as proof that every officer in the county is the same person, but as proof that a county this small has buried more than one family in a five-year window. The AEGIS Alliance has tracked similar force files in its police accountability coverage, in the case of off-duty officers and a Black bouncer, and in the later verdict that ordered an Atlanta officer to pay $21 million after paralyzing a man.

Broady’s mother, Carolyn, said the assignment was simple: cuff him, put him in the car, take him to jail. „He’d still be alive today.“ Hollinger had spoken with him hours earlier. He had promised ice cream. Her young son never met his grandfather. The family line that has stuck is short: they know he is not coming back, and they want justice anyway.

A partial settlement is not a closed file

Two officers are out. Two deputies are not. Mediation on July 30 may have produced a confidential number that has not been filed, or it may have produced nothing a clerk will stamp. Comparable Alabama custody-death matters have settled in the mid-six figures. Plaintiffs think the video supports more. The defense thinks the undetermined autopsy and the toxicology cut the other way. Readers following force cases can start with The AEGIS Alliance Vereinigte Staaten News stack. The man on the tape called the same number twice. The second time he was already in cuffs. No settlement edits that audio.