In this image taken from Alameda Police Department video camera, Alameda Police Department officers pin 26-year-old Mario Gonzalez to the ground during an arrest, April 19, in Alameda, California. Gonzalez died during his arrest and was pronounced dead at the hospital.
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In this image taken from Alameda Police Department video camera, Alameda Police Department officers pin 26-year-old Mario Gonzalez to the ground during an arrest, April 19, in Alameda, California. Gonzalez died during his arrest and was pronounced dead at the hospital.
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In a case that has attracted national attention and has been compared to the killing of George Floyd, an autopsy report was released Friday of a California man who died in April after being fatally injured. Deputies identified his manner of death as homicide but attributed methamphetamine intoxication as the leading cause.
Lawyers for his family dispute the cause.
Mario Gonzalez, 26 years old, died after Alameda police officers placed him on his stomach for five minutes in one case there is an echo of George Floyd’s murder. Local residents called 911 for Gonzalez after he appeared stunned and drunk, but not threatening or violent, in a public park.
The Alameda County Coroner’s Office’s autopsy attributed Gonzalez’s death to homicide but said the primary cause was the “toxic effects of methamphetamine.”
The chief medical examiner, Vivian Snyder, cites other important contributing factors to Gonzalez’s death, including the physiological stress of police restraint on the case as well as alcoholism and obesity.
Civil Rights Attorney Julia Sherwin, who represents the family, said her office will continue to report their case in court that it is weight restraint of officers, not meth, killed Gonzalez.
“Mario wouldn’t have died if he wasn’t restrained in a prone position, with multiple officers on his back for more than five minutes,” Sherwin told NPR.
According to the published toxicology report, Gonzalez had 0.9 milligrams of meth per liter in his system. That’s “a fairly low level of methamphetamine,” Sherwin argues, which is comparable to or even lower than the concentrations commonly found in ‘recreational’ drug use.
“As we often see in these cases of mechanical asphyxia or limited asphyxia, the pathologist has assumed that death was due to methamphetamine,” Sherwin said. intoxication. ”
County officials dispute that characterization. The report went through “multiple levels of scrutiny and peer review including a committee and we’re completely on the side of that,” said Alameda County Sheriff’s public information officer Lieutenant Ray Kelly talked about the coroner’s report. In Alameda County, the sheriff also oversees the coroner’s office.
Sherwin is preparing a federal civil rights lawsuit. She said she hopes the Alameda County District Attorney’s office “will do its job and prosecute the officers for the murders they committed, to hold those officers accountable in court. criminal court in Alameda County. And Mario’s 5-year-old son, also named Mario, will hold them accountable in civil court in a federal civil rights lawsuit.”
A spokesman for the Alameda County DA’s office declined to comment, citing that they are investigating the incident.
