Antioch man was killed by officers, attorney says

ANTIOCH >> The family of a man who died three days after going unconscious while being detained by Antioch officers is going public with a very different version of events than the narrative put forth by police last month.

According to the family of 30-year-old Angelo Quinto — as well as a civil rights attorney they’ve retained in anticipation of a lawsuit — Quinto died after an officer placed his knee on Quinto’s neck, while a second officer held down his legs. According to a news release from the office of attorney John Burris, the officers “grabbed (Quinto) from his mother’s arms” and threw him to the floor.

Quinto never regained consciousness and died three days later at a hospital. His family is now getting ready to file a legal claim — a precursor to a lawsuit — against the city of Antioch and its police force. His family says Quinto begged the officers, “please don’t kill me” as they toppled him.

The family called police because Quinto needed “mental health help,” Burris’ attorney said. Police said officers had called an ambulance to place Quinto in a mental health hold when he went unconscious.

“I was horrified to see my son snatched from arms without warning, taken down on my bedroom floor and brutally killed in front of my eyes,” Angelo Quinto’s mother, Maria QuintoCollins, said in the written news release. Burris compared Angelo Quinto’s death to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and called a Thursday morning news conference to publicly discuss the allegations.

Antioch police waited more than a month after Quinto’s death to publicly confirm the incident, in response to inquiries from this newspaper. At the time, a police spokesman said Quinto suffered a “medical emergency” while police were detaining him and said that while officers handcuffed Quinto, they didn’t use more serious force.

The spokesman, Lt. John Fortner, said police would release more information about Quinto’s death once “several unknowns” were cleared up.

An autopsy is still pending and no tentative cause of death has been released. At some point, Quinto’s death will be reviewed by a Contra Costa coroner’s inquest jury at a public hearing in Martinez.

Quinto is the latest person to die during a struggle with officers in Contra Costa. Last year, Antioch police agreed to pay $475,000 to settle a lawsuit by the family of Rakeem Rucks, who died of a heart attack as officers were attempting to put him in a restraint device. The suit by Burris’ office alleged they forced his face into the dirt and kneeled on him. In 2016, an Antioch man died of asphyxiation after an officer placed him in a carotid hold during a struggle, a technique that has since been widely banned due to a number of nationwide deaths attributed to it. Later that year, Pittsburg police killed a man by placing him in a carotid hold and later paid $7.3 million to settle the suit.