SIU probes death of man Tasered by Toronto police
Family questions delay in securing evidence after tactical squad responded to 911 call in apartment
More than 10 police officers, including a tactical squad carrying shields and a battering ram, responded to a 911 call to a family apartment in the city’s west end.
In the Nov. 6 incident that is only now coming to light, there was an altercation, two Tasers were used, and shortly after, the resident, Rodrigo Hector Almonacid Gonzalez was rolled out on a stretcher. His head was rapidly moving from side to side, according to time-stamped surveillance footage from the building provided to the Toronto Star by his family.
Gonzalez, 43, died in hospital the following day, and his family wants to know what happened in the apartment and why it took the province’s police oversight agency, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), five days to show up at the apartment. Nobody told the family to preserve the scene in the bathroom. Vital evidence may have been lost during this time, the family’s lawyer says.
“They didn’t secure the scene. Usually SIU comes right away,” said lawyer Davin Charney.
The family says Gonzalez, a parttime cleaner at a hospital and father of two, had locked himself in the bathroom. His wife, Sosana Chavarian, 50, left the apartment to call 911.
Video footage taken by Chavarian after the incident shows a bathroom in complete disarray. A door is off its hinges and partway in the tub. The floor is littered with toiletries and other items.
Chavarian said she was her call that summoned police, but neither she nor the family lawyer would say why the call was made. They say there was no physical altercation, Gonzalez was not intoxicated and he did not have a known history of mental illness.
A Toronto police spokeswoman, Meaghan Gray, said police are prohibited by law from commenting on an ongoing SIU investigation.
An SIU spokesman, Jason Gennaro, said Toronto police reported the incident the day it happened and notified the SIU when Gonzalez died Nov. 7. Gennaro did not answer why it allegedly took SIU investigators four days to contact the family.
In a news release posted on their website Wednesday after the family lawyer started asking questions, the SIU said Toronto police encountered a man in the apartment and called the Emergency Task Force for assistance. Two Tasers were used. Three SIU investigators and one forensic investigator have been assigned to the case.
Photographs taken by Gonzalez’s wife at the hospital show a head injury wrapped in bloody gauze, as well as a black eye, bruising on a limb and shoulder, and what the family suspects is a Taser mark near his groin.
Surveillance footage from the building that night shows as many as six officers responded to the call just after midnight.
An hour later, the video shows seven officers in tactical gear walking through the lobby and up the stairwell to the second-floor apartment.
Chavarian and Gonzalez’s mother, Nancy, said they had tried to get back into the apartment but were prevented by police, who told them that they were trying to get Gonzalez out of the bathroom. The two women say he did not have any injuries before police arrived.
At St. Joseph’s Health Centre, Gonzalez was strapped to the hospital bed, the family says. They said medi- cal staff did not seem to know the exact injury but told them his heart and brain were fine. Gonzalez’s mother says a police officer posted outside Gonzalez’s room in the emergency department told her that her son had resisted arrest.
The family has heard no mention that Gonzalez had a weapon.
At the apartment building, neighbour Cecilia Salazar said police had been called to the building before. The couple fought, she said, adding, “they had problems. But nothing major.”
“He was a hard worker. I never saw him drunk. I never saw him drugged. He was always very polite. He loved his children,” Salazar added.
Gonzalez and his wife, married 21 years, have two sons. Chavarian said through a Spanish interpreter that her husband, originally from Chile, was a soccer fan and a happy person with lots of friends. Before his job at the hospital he worked at a slaughterhouse for 17 years.
“I feel responsible,” said a tearful Chavarian, who placed the 911 call.
Several hours after arriving in the emergency department, Gonzalez was moved to the intensive care unit and the family said they were told he had internal bleeding and that they should call a priest.
Gonzalez died on Nov. 7 about 5 p.m., said the family, now left with questions about what happened. With files from Jesse McLean