COVER UP & CHAOS: LAST MINUTES OF HARLEM MAN MESSIAH NANTWI
TESTIMONY AT THE TRIAL OF FORMER NEW YORK STATE CORRECTION OFFICER JONAH LEVY DETAILS LAST MOMENTS OF YOUNG HARLEM MAN KILLED BY GUARDS IN UPSTATE PRISON
Messiah Nantwi.
UTICA, NEW YORK Mar. 25, 2026
The last minutes of a 22-year-old New York City native beaten to death by guards in an upstate prison have been revealed at the trial of one of the guards accused of murder for the killing.
Also revealed was an alleged failed attempt by guards to cover it up.
Messiah Nantwi was already handcuffed and shackled by the ankles when a correction officer fitting the description of the six-foot-four-inch tall defendant Jonah Levy placed a foot on each of Nantwi's calves then beat his feet with a baton.
That's what New York National Guard Infantry Spec. Nicholas Mouzon testified to Tuesday afternoon at Levy's trial. Levy is a former New York State prison guard charged with murder and related crimes for allegedly killing Nantwi at the Mid-State Correctional Facility on Mar. 1, 2025.
Levy was part of an elite group of guards called a Correction Emergency Response Team—CERT for short. When Levy and the CERT team carried Nantwi out of his cell after beating him for the first of three alleged times, Spec. Mouzon saw Nantwi was cuffed.
"There was a CERT member carrying his hands in the middle of the mechanized restraints," Mouzon testified, in his camouflage uniform, Tuesday afternoon.
Nantwi was already gravely injured, according to Mouzon.
His "eyes were closed," Mouzon revealed. "There was blood on his head."
Mouzon said he heard Nantwi "making—best way I can describe it—aggravated dog noises. He was growling.”
Before the guards were done and Nantwi was dead, they beat him two more times. First in a stairwell and finally in a hold cell in the prison's infirmary, police and prosecutors allege.
Nantwi’s killing took place on the 15th day of a wildcat strike by guards that saw National Guard troops replace strikers. A minority of guards continued working. Most went on strike. Members of Mid-State’s CERT stayed on the job.
Nantwi's killing took place less than three months after another "beat-up squad" of all white guards killed Robert Brooks at the Marcy Correctional Facility on Dec. 9, 2024. Marcy is directly across the road from Mid-State.
Levi, the former correction officer on trial for Nantwi's killing, faces six charges, including second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter. If found guilty, the law allows presiding judge Michael R. Nolan to sentence Levy to up to 25 years to life in prison.
New York National Guard Infantry Spec. Nicholas Mouzon testifed at the trial of Jonah Levy, a former New York State prison guard accused of murder and related charges for killing Messiah Nantwi at the Mid-State Correctional Facility outside Utica on Mar. 1, 2026. Photo credit: JB NIcholas
Mouzon, the National Guard infantry grunt, testified he received 30 minutes of training for the deployment before working his first 12-hour shift—from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM—inside Mid-State. National Guard troops generally worked in groups of four. Only a few had batons. A few more had pepper spray.
The rules of engagement were simple.
If the prisoner had a weapon, a weapon—the baton and/or pepper spray—could be used against them. If they did not have a weapon, only "body holds" were supposed to be used. Once a prisoner was handcuffed and shackled, all use of force was supposed to stop.
Their main job, Mouzon testified, was to make sure "nothing bad is going on in the housing unit." National Guard troops weren't supposed to engage problematic prisoners. They were supposed to call for help. The troops had radios that operated on the correction officer frequencies so they could call for help.
Help at Mid-State during the strike was the CERT team.
The day Nantwi was killed, Mouzon and his four-solider team were the only ones working the housing unit where Nantwi lived at Mid-State. No corrections officers at all were working there. The National Guard troops rarely worked the same unit twice. They were not familiar with the men they were guarding.
Guards count prisoners several times a day to ensure no one has escaped. Mid-State had a count at 11:00 AM every day. Nantwi knew he was supposed to stay in his room so he could be counted by the Troops, but Nantwi decided he wanted to take a shower.
When Mouzon and the three other National Guard soldiers confronted him in the shower room, and told him to get back to his room for the count, Nantwi defied them.
"He just kept repeating to us, 'What if I don't want to?'," Mouzon testified. "And each time he's getting louder."
"That's when," Mouzon testified, another prisoner "steps in."
Michael Moon tried to mentor Nantwi, Fitzpatrick, the special prosecutor, said in his opening statement to the jury Tuesday morning.
Nantwi was shot multiple times by NYPD cops in the Bronx in 2021.
In 2023, Nantwi allegedly shot two young men in 27 hours in Manhattan. In addition to doing time for illegally possessing a handgun, Natwi was facing two murder charges when he was killed.
Nantwi responded to Moon by pulling out "a #2 pencil" and grasping it in his closed fist point down, eraser up like he was "holding a knife," Spec. Mouzon said.
That's when one of the other three National Guard troops Mouzon was with who he called a "shift leader" transmitted a call for assistance over his radio: "Back up, back up, back up."
Nantwi relented when that call was made.
"He calmed down instantly," Mouzon said. "Like flipping a switch."
Nantwi relaxed and returned to his room, Mouzon revealed.
But Levy and the rest of Mid-State's CERT team were already on the way.
Correction Officer James Backer was the first guard to arrive.
"I just wanted to talk to the inmate, see what was going on," Backer testified.
He asked Nantwi is he was OK. Nantwi answered "I'm all right."
Backer, a 22-year veteran, testified no National Guard troops told him Nantwi had a weapon and he did not see one. Backer activated his body camera. It confirms no one did. The camera also captured Nantwi standing in the middle of his room holding both of his hands out at waist level palms up—displaying it was not armed.
"He seemed fine," Backer said of Nantwi. "There was no threat going on. I was ready to leave."
Backer turned to leave, and had to thread himself through responding CERT officers clad in tactical vests, the video showed.
Mouzon let them in the housing unit and watched as six to seven of them entered Nantwi's room and demanded he submit to being handcuffed. Instead of submitting, Nantwi refused.
"He was saying, 'What did I do?,'" Mouzon said. "They eventually force him to the bed."
"They're holding him down," Mouzon added. "He's still fighting back. I heard a CERT member say, 'He's biting.' I can see a CERT member punching him."
Other prisoners were looking out of their cell-like rooms in the long corridor that connected about 50 of them. Some were yelling to stop.
"It was getting rowdy in the housing unit," Mouzon said.
Mouzon watched as the CERT team removed a handcuffed and shackled Nantwi from his room. He also watched as they carried him to a door leading to a stairwell and down.
"For all intents and purposes, Messiah Nantwi is dead" about 30 minutes after the National Guard troops called for the help from the CERT team, Fitzpatrick, the special prosecutor, said during his opening statement to the jury Tuesday morning.
After killing Nantwi, Guards sanitized the three different places—three different crime scenes—inside the prison where Nantwi was allegedly beaten.
"They were cleaned up," State Police Investigator Olivia Tabor also testified Tuesday afternoon, before Mouzon.
A high-ranking official in the state agency that manages New York's prisons testified sanitizing the crime scenes was against official policy. Prison policy requires preservation of potential crimes scenes after prisoner deaths, the official said.
"It was not done" in Nantwi's case, Christopher Maruscello, Assistant Commissioner and Assistant Chief of Investigation with the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision testified, also on Tuesday. "Yes it was cleaned up."
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