NEW YORK » Eric Garner was lumbering along a sidewalk on Staten Island on a July day when an unmarked police car pulled up.

The plainclothes officers inside knew Garner well, mostly for selling untaxed cigarettes not far from the nearby Staten Island Ferry Terminal.

Garner – who at 6 feet 2 inches tall and 395 pounds was hard to miss – recognized them, too. Everyone did, at least among those who hawked cigarettes and cheap goods on that stretch of Bay Street along Tompkinsville Park. For years, they played a cat-and-mouse game with the New York City officers who came to arrest them.

As the officers approached, Garner, 43, shouted at them to back off, according to two witnesses. He flailed his arms. He refused to be detained or frisked. He had been arrested twice already that year near the same spot, in March and May, charged both times with circumventing state tax law.

But on that day in July, the officers left him with a warning.

"It was the first time I ever saw them let him go," said John McCrae, who watched the encounter. Garner took that experience to heart, McCrae said.

"You figure if it stops them the first time," he said, "it might get them to stop the second time."

The next time came later that month: July 17.

One of the officers, Justin Damico, returned, accompanied by a different partner, Daniel Pantaleo. As they moved in, a cellphone camera held by a friend of Garner’s recorded the struggle that would soon be seen by millions.

The chokehold. The swarm of officers. The 11 pleas for breath.

Garner’s final words – "I can’t breathe" – became a rallying cry for a protest movement. Official scrutiny and public outcry narrowed to focus on the actions of a single officer.

But interviews and previously undisclosed documents obtained by The New York Times provide new details and a fresh understanding of how the seemingly routine police encounter began, how it hurtled toward its deadly conclusion and how the police and emergency medical workers responded.

It was March of last year and Gjafer Gjeshbitraj had had enough. A landlord on Bay Street, Gjeshbitraj went online to 311, the municipal hotline’s website, to complain about men loitering outside his Staten Island apartment building.

They gathered there to sell cigarettes and drugs, he said.

The business of loose cigarettes is simple and longstanding. Drive to Pennsylvania or Delaware or a nearby Indian reservation. Return to heavily taxed New York City with cheaper boxes of cigarettes. Sell for a profit. Repeat.

Garner was among a handful of men who sold near the park. He used the money to help support his wife, Esaw, and their six children.

A Fatal Encounter

On July 17, Garner had just come from eating lunch with a 23-year-old friend, Ramsey Orta, when a scuffle broke out in front of them on Bay Street. "You can’t keep doing this; there are kids out here," Garner said, as he held the men apart, according to witness Taisha Allen.

The men went on their way.

That afternoon, Lt. Christopher Bannon, driving by, had spotted a group that included Garner. He called the precinct to tell officers to "get out there," according to the former police official.

As the two officers closed in on Garner, Orta began taking video that would total about 16 minutes.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way," Damico told Garner, according to a transcript of the videos prepared by the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau and reviewed by The Times.

The transcript documents nearly two minutes of back-and-forth between the officers and Garner preceding the chokehold – footage not included in the widely circulated clip of Orta’s video.

"For what, what did I do?" Garner said.

"For selling cigarettes," Damico replied.

In the course of the encounter, officers tried to grab his arms at least twice, according to the transcript.

Pantaleo, anticipating an arrest, radioed for backup before swinging one arm over Garner’s shoulder and around his neck and another under his arm, an attempt to twist the larger man’s body to the ground. The pair rammed against the plate glass window of Bay Beauty Supply; by that time, at least four uniformed officers had arrived.

As Pantaleo and other officers pressed Garner onto the sidewalk, a uniformed patrol sergeant, Kizzy Adonis, entered the tight frame of the video. It was not clear exactly when a second sergeant, Dhanan Saminath, arrived.

In the video, Pantaleo, who moved from holding Garner’s neck to pressing his head to the pavement, Damico and two uniformed patrol officers, Mark Ramos and Craig Furlani, helped handcuff Garner. As they did so, Garner repeated, "I can’t breathe."

Difficulty Breathing

Officers in the videos did not appear to respond to Garner’s pleas. Saminath reported Garner had difficulty breathing and called an ambulance, but he said Garner "did not appear to be in great distress," the report said.

At 3:32 p.m., officers radioed for an ambulance, said a city official, who requested anonymity. About a minute and a half later, another request was made. Both were categorized as "unknown," a low priority.

An ambulance crew arrived unaware of Garner’s condition, or that police officers were involved. A stretcher was not immediately brought to him. A bag with oxygen equipment that should have been near his body at all times was carried away.

At 3:44 p.m. – 12 minutes after the first request for an ambulance – emergency medical workers upgraded the seriousness of the situation to the highest priority level, or Segment 1. They did so, the city official said, because Garner was in cardiac arrest.

Garner was declared dead at 4:34 p.m. at Richmond University Medical Center.

An autopsy was performed the next day. "On external examination of the neck, there are no visible injuries," according to the final report. On the inside, however, were telltale signs of choking: strap muscle hemorrhages in his neck and petechial hemorrhages in his eyes. No drugs or alcohol were in his system.

The results of the examination contrasted sharply with the Police Department’s initial account, titled "Death of Perpetrator in Police Custody, Within the Confines of the 120 Precinct." It contained no mention of any contact with Garner’s neck.

Struggling to Move On

Eleven months later, a lush patch of grass in a faded field in Union County, New Jersey, is all that marks Garner’s grave. His mother, Gwen Carr, said she was waiting for the ground to settle as she tried to gather money for a headstone.

Orta, the man who recorded the deadly confrontation, is facing charges for gun and drug offenses that his family believes are retaliation by the police.

Garner’s family is in talks with the city about a financial settlement.

In the only inquiry completed, a Staten Island grand jury found Pantaleo committed no crime when he used a chokehold – a technique banned by police rules.

Gjeshbitraj said in a recent interview that he no longer called the city or the police to complain about the conditions around his building, as he had frequently in the months and years before Garner died.

"The last time I called the cops, someone got choked to death," he said. "Eric got killed because I called."

© 2015 The New York Times Company