Lawsuit against Arnold police alleges excessive force

A Verona man has sued the Westmoreland County city of Arnold, its police chief and two police officers, saying the officers roughed him up without cause after a burglary call to an apartment building where he was working as a contractor and took him into custody before realizing they had the wrong person.

Matthew Heyl and his lawyer, D. Aaron Rihn, filed the suit Tuesday in federal court, alleging that the police violated his civil rights and that the city and the chief didn’t train or supervise them properly.

Arnold officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The defendants are the city, Chief Shannon Santucci-Davis, and Officers Robert Haus and Wesley Biricocchi.

Mr. Heyl, then 27, said he was working at an apartment building on 18th Street on the evening of Feb. 27, 2018. His job was to clean, paint and fix appliances in the building. He said he stepped outside to smoke and saw two police cars next to his vehicle.

He said he learned that Officers Haus and Biricocchi were called to the building because a resident in one of the units said a man with a gun was trying to get in. Mr. Heyl said the two officers asked him if he’d seen the suspect. He said no, and they then asked him “aggressively” whose vehicle was parked outside, he said. When he said it was his, the officers accosted him, according to the suit.

“Even though Mr. Heyl did not match the description of the burglar, Defendants Haus and Biricocchi grabbed Mr. Heyl, pulled his arms around his back, and proceeded to ask him where the gun was located,” the suit reads.

He said one officer threw him to the ground and the other put him in a chokehold. They shoved a knee into his back and handcuffed him, he said, then “tossed him” in the back of a police car.

Mr. Heyl said they searched him for a weapon but didn’t find one.

The officers ran his name through their records and confirmed that he wasn’t the man the resident had identified as the burglar.

Mr. Heyl said he went to the hospital complaining that his “whole body was sore” from the arrest and was diagnosed with muscle strains in his back and shoulders and cuts on his knees.

The suit accuses all the defendants of excessive force and false arrest in violation of the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure. Another claim accuses the city and chief of failure to supervise the officers to prevent them from abusing people.

Mr. Heyl is asking for unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.