‘CURB STOMPED’ TO DEATH BY A PRISON GUARD: 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 Last updated: 10:54 PM
The last minutes of a 22-year-old Harlem man 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.
“I saw Officer Levi kick the individual in the head three to six times, curb-stomped him,” former New York State Correction Officer Nathan Palmer testified at the trial of Jonah Levy, the former guard on trial for killing Messiah Nantwi.
It may have been more. Maybe Levy kicked Nantwi in the head “five to six, five to seven” times, Palmer added.
After Levy curb-stomped Nantwi, Palmer looked down at the mortally wounded man.
“He looked up at me and that’s the last I saw of him,” Palmer testified.
Afterward, Palmer testified he criticized Levy—who was on probation for beating another prisoner in 2023.
“I said ‘What the fuck? What the fuck man?,’” Palmer testified.
Explaining why he wasn’t more specific, Palmer explained “We worked with each other long enough to know when we fuck up.”
Palmer and Levy served on the prison’s version of a SWAT unit called a “Correction Emergency Response Team” for years. They were close. Palmer avoided Levy’s laser-like glare while he testified against his old friend.
Palmer’s testimony was just some of the evidence Special Prosecutor William J. Fitzpatrick introduced in the first two days of Levy’s trial. Levy is charged with murder and related crimes for allegedly killing Nantwi at the Mid-State Correctional Facility outside Utica in central New York on Mar. 1, 2025.
If found guilty of murder, the law allows presiding judge Michael R. Nolan to sentence Levy to up to 25 years to life in prison.
For his role in Nantwi’s killing, Palmer pleaded guilty to two felonies and faces anywhere from 0 to 2 years when he is sentenced later this year.
Former New York State Correction Officer Nathan Palmer waiting to testify against former friend and co-worker Jonah Levy, the former guard on trial for killing Messiah Nantwi. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
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.
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.
New York National Guard Infantry Spec. Nicholas Mouzon saw Nantwi as the CERT team carried him out.
"There was a CERT member carrying his hands in the middle of the mechanized restraints," Mouzon testified, in his camouflage uniform.
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.”
Mouzon 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.
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
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.
Prisoners are counted several times a day to ensure no one has escaped or been killed. 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."
Nantwi responded 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. Nantwi told him to mind his business.
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.
Michael Moon was Nantwi’s room-mate at Mid-State. He tried to mentor Nantwi, Moon testified Wednesday afternoon. Moon was serving 20 years for five armed robberies of check-cashing stores in the Albany area.
Nantwi was shot multiple times by NYPD cops in the Bronx in 2021. In 2023, Nantwi allegedly shot two young men to death 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.
“Messy” was Moon’s nickname for Nantwi, Moon testified. “He was a hot mess.”
Still, Moon said, “I was his friend.”
They worked out together, played chess together and talked for hours. Moon said he was trying to lead Nantwi away from crime. But Nantwi had a tendency to throw what he described as “tantrums.” Sometime “he’ll get aggressive” even with Moon, but it was “never physical.”
The day Nantwi was killed, Moon woke up early but went back to bed. Because of the strike, prisoners’ usual jobs and programs were cancelled and, at Mid-State, they had to stay inside their dormitory-style housing units. Moon said he woke up because he heard Nantwi yelling at the Troops over the shower.
“I heard some type of noise, a commotion,” Moon testified. “I see Messy’s talking to three National Guardsmen.”
Michael Moon, Messiah Nantwi’s roommate at the Mid-State Correctional Facility, entering court to testify against Jonah Levy, the former state prison guard charged with Nantwi’s 2025 murder. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
After the Troops called for back-up, Nantwi returned to the room he shared with Moon. Moon said he didn’t see the pencil Mouzon testified he saw Nantwi holding. Nantwi was telling Moon what happened when the first Correction Officer, James Backer, showed up.
"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. Video from Backer’s body camera 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 he was not armed.
"He seemed fine," Backer said of Nantwi. "There was no threat going on. I was ready to leave."
Backer had to thread himself through responding CERT officers clad in tactical vests as he left, the video showed.
Guards demanded Nantwi submit to being handcuffed. Nantwi refused.
“I ain’t cuffin’ up!,” Nantwi yelled. “I ain’t done nuthin’!,” audio from a body camera worn by the commanding CERT team officer on scene, Sgt. Michael Iffert, documents.
There is no body camera video of Nantwi’s beating because only Sgt. Iffert was wearing a body camera and he pointed his body camera down the hallway and away from the room.
Palmer, the former guard who testified against Levy on Wednesday, was the first CERT officer to enter Nantwi’s room as Backer left. When Nantwi refused to put his hands on the wall to be handcuffed, Palmer ordered him “to knock it off and get his fucking hands on the wall.”
But Nantwi jumped on a second CERT officer who entered the room, Joshua Bartlett.
“He did lunge at Officer Bartlett. He jumped at Officer Bartlett and appeared to grab him around the neck or chest area, or his vest,” Palmer testified. “I made a split-second decision. I bear-hugged both of them and picked them up and slammed them onto the bed.”
Palmer said CERT members Caleb Blair and Daniel Burger jumped in to help handcuff and shackle Nantwi too.
“Blair did get bit during the struggle,” Palmer testified. “He yelled ‘I just got fucking bit.’”
Moon was in the back of the room with his hands on the wall with a guard behind him, the body camera video showed. Moon remembers it a little differently.
“Nigger bit my finger,” is what Moon remembered Blair yelling.
Jonah Levy listening to his lawyer speak to the jury at his murder trial. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
After that happened, they pulled Nantwi off his bed and onto the floor. Face first. Nantwi’s head was near his locker, which Moon said was at the front of their shared cell. That’s when Levy kicked Nantwi in the head repeatedly.
Levy “takes a step back and kicks Messy in the face,” Moon testified. “He kicked him like he was a football. Right in the face.”
Levy kicked Nantwi so hard, “His face bounced off the locker,” Moon said.
The blow knocked Nantwi out, but Levy didn’t stop. He “stomped on his face.”
Then the guards “took out their batons” and started beating Nantwi with those, Moon said.
“They continuously started beating on him,” Moon testified. “The last words he said were ‘Whoopty. Whoopty.’”
A loud metallic bang can be heard on the audio of the video captured by Sgt. Iffert’s body worn camera at 11:02:52 on the video’s clock. The sound aligns with the testimony that’s when Levy kicked Nantwi in the face and his head ricochet off his metal locker.
Following the loud metallic bang, close to two dozen dull slaps can be heard for almost a minute starting at 11:03:14.
“That’s their batons hitting him,” Moon testified.
When the dull slaps stop, Nantwi can be heard moaning in pain at 11:03:55. At 11:04, an officer announces Nantwi has finally been handcuffed and shackled at the ankles.
Moon testified the CERT team beat Nantwi until Sgt. Iffert “was like, ‘Alright that’s it’ and then he was taken out.”
Guards carried Nantwi “off the dorm,” Palmer testified.
The carried him down a flight of stairs to another building in the prison housing its infirmary, Mouzon and Palmer testified. Nantwi died there less than 30 minutes later, Fitzpatrick, the Special Prosecutor, said in his opening statement Tuesday morning.
Palmer overheard Blair and Levy arguing moments after they beat Nantwi.
“Blair was yelling at Officer Levy saying he’s got three kids, saying this guy’s not worth it.” Levy responded, “‘You’re just mad because you got your fingers bit,’” Palmer testified.
Palmer saw Nantwi in a holding cell in the infirmary.
“Not a very good condition,” Palmer said. “His head was slouched.”
Minutes later, Nantwi went into cardiac arrest and Palmer was one of the people—including nurses and National Guard soldiers—who performed CPR on Nantwi in a failed attempt to save his life.
A cover-up of Nantwi’s killing was immediately orchestrated by by higher-ups.
Sgt. Francis Chandler ordered Levy, Palmer and the rest of the CERT team to gather in another building at Mid-State.
“He was telling everybody that Levy had to be off the paperwork because he’s on probation,” Palmer testified.
Sgt. Chandler also orchestrated false reports that said a shank—a homemade knife—was found in Nantwi’s possession, Palmer and a second guard testifying for the prosecution, Tristian Sheppard, said on Wednesday.
“Sgt. Chandler decided to plant the weapon on him,” Shepperd testified.
In truth, the weapon had been given to Sheppard by National Guard troops earlier the same day .
Chandler pleaded guilty to gang assault in 2025 and faces up to four years in prison when he is sentenced later this year.
Guards had the three different places—three different crime scenes—inside the prison where Nantwi was allegedly beaten cleaned up.
"They were cleaned up," State Police Investigator Olivia Tabor testified Tuesday afternoon.
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.
Guards ignored the policy.
"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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