Police chiefs in Baltimore retreated on Friday from earlier claims that Freddie Gray, whose death has caused an outcry, must have been injured inside the van carrying him after his arrest.
They said they were investigating what happened during one of the stops made by the vehicle.
Asked whether Gray was fatally hurt by a so-called “rough ride” without a seatbelt in the back of the vehicle, or could have been injured outside the van, police commissioner Anthony Batts said at a press conference there were “potentials for both of those”.
“If someone harmed Freddie Gray, we will have to prosecute him,” said Batts.
Deputy commissioner Kevin Davis said officials were looking into the second of three stops the van’s driver made after Gray was arrested on the morning of 12 April. “The facts of that interaction are under investigation,” said Davis.
Gray, 25, died last Sunday after suffering a broken neck and injured voice box. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said earlier this week “what happened happened inside the van,” echoing a police report that said Gray “suffered a medical emergency” in the vehicle.
City authorities are running a criminal inquiry into his death and the US Department of Justice is investigating for potential civil rights charges. The six officers involved in Gray’s arrest have been suspended.
Batts confirmed to the Guardian on Friday that one of the officers was declining to speak with investigators, citing their constitutional rights.
Video of Gray’s arrest, which showed him being dragged into the police van by officers, has been cited by protesters as reason to doubt police claims that Gray was healthy when first placed in the van. While he was shouting in apparent pain and moving his head, one of his legs appeared limp. The video did not show his initial treatment by police.
In a cryptic section of his remarks on Friday, Batts suggested investigators were concentrating on a specific event that occurred between Gray’s arrest and his collection by an ambulance at the western district police headquarters about 40 minutes later.
“We’re focusing in,” he said. “There is, and I’m not going to give you all the information, there’s an incident, or not ‘incident’, because I’ll get you off on the right path. There’s something that we have to look at, that we have to have further investigation on.”
Batts confirmed that Gray, who was in leg irons, was not wearing a seatbelt in the vehicle as required by the department’s policy. “There are no excuses for that. Period,” he said. Past prisoners in Baltimore have died from injuries sustained when they were thrown around the back of police vehicles due to fast or erratic driving and abrupt stops.
The police commissioner reiterated that his officers “failed to get medical attention” for Gray despite his requests for an asthma inhaler and other complaints. Batts said medics should have been called to the scene of Gray’s arrest.
Davis said Gray said he needed a medic during a third stop by the van, made to pick up a second prisoner, but an ambulance was not called until 25 minutes later, after the vehicle arrived at police headquarters. Batts told reporters that during the third stop, officers “picked him up off the floor and placed him on a seat”.
Batts said on Thursday that the second prisoner, who was separated from Gray by a metal wall, told investigators that Gray was “was still moving around, that he was kicking and making noises” until the van arrived at the station. Police are declining to identify the man due to his status as a witness in the criminal inquiry.
Protesters gathered in west Baltimore for a sixth evening of demonstrations on Friday and hundreds of people and protest organisations are expected to descend on the city on Saturday. Police urged demonstrators to remain calm and non-violent.
