POLICE CUSTODY DEATH SUIT SETTLED FOR $300K
Litigation ends in case of man who died after being in restraint device
National City will pay $300,000 to the widow and other family members of Earl McNeil to settle a lawsuit over his 2018 death, which occurred after he stopped breathing and suffered brain damage while in police custody.
The City Council gave final approval Tuesday for the settlement, voting to pass a resolution approving an agreement signed last month by the plaintiffs, defendants and their attorneys. The council had approved the settlement amount more than 16 months ago in a closed session.
The settlement — which is not an admission of liability or guilt on behalf of the city, the police chief, the police officers or the sheriff’s deputies who were defendants in the federal excessive-force lawsuit — brings to a close the litigation against the city in McNeil’s death, which sparked near-weekly protests in the summer and fall of 2018.
Activists and demonstrators flooded the National City council chambers during each of its meetings, speaking for hours during public comment to demand answers about McNeil’s death and ac
FROM A1 countability for the officers they accused of killing him.
Separately, McNeil’s family has an active lawsuit filed in San Diego Superior Court against the maker of a restraint officers used to subdue McNeil the morning he slipped into a coma from which he never recovered. Safe Restraints Inc. denies the claims that its product contributed to McNeil’s death.
McNeil, 40, died June 11, 2018, about two weeks after he had shown up outside the city’s police headquarters just after dawn on May 26. He used a phone outside the station to speak with dispatchers, telling them he wanted to turn himself in — a warrant had been issued for him for not showing up in court — and saying he was high and wanted to “kill Jesus.”
Police officers who approached him first put him in handcuffs and then, as McNeil struggled, wrestled him to the ground. They then placed him in The WRAP, a restraint system that is supposed to subdue people while keeping officers and the person safe from harm.
The system wraps the person’s legs in a type of blanket, immobilizing their lower half, and connects a strap from the chest to the ankle, causing the person to sit upright.
McNeil was in the device for nearly two hours, and law enforcement also placed two spit socks over his head. For more than half that time he was in the back of a police vehicle — alone, but monitored periodically by police, authorities said. Eventually he was taken to county jail, but
a nurse there declined to book him.
Instead, an ambulance was called to take him for a medical and psychological evaluation. Just after the ambulance arrived, McNeil stopped breathing. Paramedics were able to resuscitate him and get him to a hospital, but he never regained consciousness, and his family terminated life support two weeks later.
The county Medical Examiner’s Office concluded he died of brain damage caused by respiratory arrest. The combination of being in The WRAP and the spit socks — used because McNeil was repeatedly spitting on police — created a respiratory compromise that the medical examiner said could have led to his heart stopping. An autopsy later showed McNeil had meth in his system.
In September 2018, District Attorney Summer Stephan announced that no National City officers, nor a handful of San Diego County sheriff ’s deputies who were at the jail when McNeil stopped breathing, would face charges in connection
with his death.
In March 2019, McNeil’s widow and other family members sued National City, its police chief and several officers and county sheriff ’s deputies, accusing the officers of excessive force and failing to provide “critically needed” medical care. The suit claimed those violations, and others, were fueled in part by “unconstitutional policies and practices.”
The family sought unspecified damages in the suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The City Council voted 5-0 during a closed session in May 2020 to approve the $300,000 settlement, and the parties agreed to the settlement Aug. 15.
Attorneys for McNeil’s family members and the defendants did not respond Tuesday to phone messages and emails seeking comment on the settlement.