Mother sues Alameda, officers over man’s death
The mother of Mario Gonzalez has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Alameda and the police officers who pinned him to the ground for five minutes, saying her son died after he was illegally and unjustifiably restrained last April.
In the 21-page lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Edith Arenales alleges that Officers Eric McKinley, James Fisher and Cameron Leahy “used excessive force against (Gonzalez), and unjustified deadly force that included a suffocating restraint” that caused her 26-year-old son to
die from restraint asphyxia.
The lawsuit said officers failed to de-escalate the situation and knew Gonzalez did not pose any danger and didn’t make any “threatening action toward any of the officers.”
On the morning of April 19, 2021, Alameda police Officers McKinley and Fisher responded to calls about a man who was talking to himself outside the front gate of a home on the corner of Oak and Powell streets. The officers approached
Gonzalez when he was at Scout Park near the home, where another caller reported seeing a man with what appeared to be stolen bottles of alcohol.
Body camera footage showed McKinley speaking to Gonzalez for nine minutes before he, Fisher and Leahy restrained him facedown on the ground for five minutes. Gonzalez went limp while being restrained and didn’t have a pulse when he arrived at Alameda Hospital, according to the coroner’s report.
The suit said Gonzalez was clearly confused and disoriented.
“During the conversation any reasonable officer would have been able to tell that (Gonzalez) was confused and likely under the influence by his responses.”
Randy Fenn, the interim Alameda police chief at the time, is also named in the suit. The lawsuit alleges the Police Department’s “failure to discipline or retrain the Defendant Officers is evidence of an official policy, entrenched culture and posture of deliberate indifference toward protecting citizen’s rights.”
The lawsuit is seeking expenses for coroner’s fees, funeral and burial costs, and punitive damages.
The suit is the second filed by a relative of Gonzalez.
In December, a federal civil rights and wrongful death lawsuit was filed on behalf of
Gonzalez’s 5-year-old son, also named Mario, by the boy’s mother, Andrea Cortez.
Alameda police initially said Gonzalez died after suffering a “medical emergency” while officers tried arresting him during a “physical altercation” and “scuffle” with police.
The Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau described his death as a homicide but cited the “toxic effects of methamphetamine” as the cause of death and added “physiologic stress of altercation and restraint, morbid obesity, and alcoholism contributing to the process of dying.”