Almost three years after a Bay Space man died when police pinned him facedown, in a case that drew comparisons to the killing of George Floyd, the Alameda Police Division officers concerned have been charged with involuntary manslaughter, authorities introduced.
The costs within the demise of Mario Gonzalez, 26, got here Thursday. Gonzalez died after an altercation with police on April 19, 2021. No fees have been filed in opposition to the officers on the time.
An preliminary post-mortem cited “physiological stress of altercation and restraint” as considered one of 4 elements in Gonzalez’s demise, together with the “poisonous results of methamphetamine,” morbid weight problems and alcoholism.
The Alameda County district lawyer’s Public Accountability Unit reopened the case in 2023, and a second post-mortem decided that Gonzalez had died as “a results of restraint asphyxiation,” in accordance with the prosecutor.
The case was introduced by Dist. Atty Pamela Worth. Elected in 2022, Worth had promised in her marketing campaign to reopen the inquiry, which had been closed with out fees by earlier Dist. Atty. Nancy O’Malley.
The three officers, Eric McKinley, James Fisher and Cameron Leahy, have been charged with involuntary manslaughter.
Gonzalez’s demise drew comparisons to Floyd’s 2020 homicide in Minneapolis by then-Officer Derek Chauvin, a killing that set off nationwide protests in opposition to police brutality.
Lower than a yr later, law enforcement officials in Alameda responded to a report of an intoxicated particular person and doable theft at a neighborhood park.
Physique digicam footage launched by the Police Division reveals the officers’ interplay with Gonzalez. Within the video, Gonzalez struggles to reply their questions and seems dazed. After he fails to provide identification for the officers, they try to pin his arms behind his again to handcuff him.
The officers decide that Gonzalez is resisting and push him to the bottom, the video reveals.
“We’re going to deal with you, OK? We’re going to deal with you,” one officer tells Gonzalez as they proceed to restrain him.
“I feel you simply had an excessive amount of to drink at this time, OK? That’s all,” the officer continues. After studying his identify, the officer provides, “Mario, simply please cease combating us.”
Gonzalez will be seen facedown in wooden chips, grunting and shouting because the officers maintain him down.
One officer places a knee on Gonzalez’s again and holds it there for at the very least 4 minutes, at the same time as Gonzalez gasps for air.
“I didn’t do nothing, OK?” Gonzalez says at one level.
An officer finally says that Gonzelez is “going unresponsive,” in accordance with the video. The officers then roll Gonzalez over and carry out CPR on him. He died on the hospital later that day.
In its preliminary public touch upon the case, the Alameda Police Division didn’t point out that Gonzalez had been restrained, saying solely that “officers tried to detain the person, and a bodily altercation ensued. At the moment, the person had a medical emergency.”
However Gonzalez’s household noticed the state of affairs in another way.
“The police killed my brother, in the identical method they killed George Floyd,” his brother Gerardo Gonzalez instructed reporters on the time.
Alison Berry Wilkinson, a lawyer who represented all three officers through the felony investigation however who now represents solely Leahy, known as the case a “blatantly political prosecution.”
“The officers’ actions whereas taking Mr. Gonzalez into custody have been cheap, vital, and lawful, and his tragic demise was the results of drug toxicity, not felony misconduct,” she stated.
All three officers are nonetheless lively in regulation enforcement and can give up themselves within the case, Berry Wilkinson stated.
