A 26-year-old California man died while he was in police custody on April 19.
Mario Gonzalez died after officers in Alameda County pinned him to the ground, facedown, for five minutes. Police initially said a physical altercation ensued after a medical emergency, but Gonzalez’s family lawyer called that “misinformation.”
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The body camera footage, released Tuesday, showed Gonzalez on the ground with multiple officers holding his hands behind his back while putting their weight on him. He appeared to be wheezing while officers told him to “please stop fighting us.”
After about five minutes, an officer said to the other two on-scene, “We have no weight on his chest,” and the officer told another to remove his knee from his back as he placed it there.
Moments later, officers rolled him over and realized he was unresponsive. They began CPR after allegedly not finding a pulse.
The three officers, Eric McKinley, Cameron Leahy, and James Fisher, have been put on leave, and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office and the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office are both conducting independent investigations, according to the New York Times. The City of Alameda is conducting a separate investigation, and it hired Louise Renne, founding partner of Renne Public Law Group, to lead the investigation.
On the day of Gonzalez’s death, the Alameda Police Department released a statement saying that “a physical altercation ensued,” and that “at that time, the man had a medical emergency,” though Julia Sherwin, a lawyer representing Gonzalez’s family, called the explanation “misinformation.”
“His death was completely avoidable and unnecessary,” she said. “Drunk guy in a park doesn’t equal a capital sentence.”
Gonzalez’s death occurred a day before the jury reached a guilty verdict in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who used similar techniques while trying to apprehend George Floyd, who died in his custody.
Chauvin was found guilty on April 20 on charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter for his role in the death of Floyd on May 25, 2020.
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Chauvin used his knee to pin Floyd to the ground after his hands were cuffed behind his back. The officer kept his knee pressed against Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes, and he later died.