In the predawn hours of a mid-October morning in 1971, 17-year-old African American teenager Elton Hayes was a passenger in a truck in Memphis, Tennessee, when a high-speed chase with law enforcement ended with the vehicle in a ditch on an isolated country road. Initial officer reports called it a traffic accident, but Hayes’s injuries showed he had been severely beaten, his skull shattered by forceful blows.

His death prompted citywide protests and an investigation that resulted in indictments. Three sheriff’s deputies and one city policeman were charged with first-degree murder in Hayes’s death, while four other city policemen were charged with assault with intent to murder in connection with the beating of Hayes’s 14-year-old companion. The trial that followed became a focal point for a city already strained by racial tensions.

Does anyone have additional details about the officers involved, the trial, or witnesses who were in that area that morning?