Nearly a year after police killed Mario Gonzalez in Alameda, California, the district attorney announced that no charges would be filed against the officers involved.
In a report from the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, sent to Halfpost on Thursday, District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said “the evidence does not support the criminal charge.”
April 19, 2021, San Francisco Bay Area City Police Gonzalez sat on his knees for about four minutes, until he died. Body camera Footage, released After screaming from his family later that month, officers approached Gonzalez, who was alone in a nearby park with a bottle of wine, when a neighbor told him he was intoxicated. Gonzalez spoke quietly to the officers for about nine minutes. Police then put Gonzalez’s hand behind his back and pressed him under his mouth. At least one officer knelt him down until he stopped breathing and lost his pulse.
The DA report described officers as “struggling at the top” in Gonzalez. Even after he was handcuffed and lying face down on the ground with officers on top of him, the report described Gonzalez as “continuing to resist physically” because he was moving his legs.
“After holding Gonzalez for about three minutes and 39 seconds while he was wearing a handcuff, Mr. Gonzalez became unresponsive,” the report said.
Gonzalez’s family has long called for the charges against O’Malley, the three officers involved – Eric McKinley, James Fisher and Cameron Lehi – all of whom have been on paid administrative leave for the past year. The Alameda Police Department said officers would be “suspended” and on paid leave until the city’s independent investigation is completed.
In a December report, the county coroner’s office declared Gonzalez’s death a homicide.
“These officers should be under jail at this time,” the family’s attorney, Adante Pointer, told The Halfpost last week, before the district attorney’s report came out. He was concerned that police officers would only be reinstated.
For Gonzalez’s family, this past year without him has been “like a nightmare,” his mother, Edith Arenales, said last week.
Gonzalez was 26 when police killed him. Her son, who is 5 years old and named after his father, often asks where his father is, when he is coming home.
“How can I explain that he is not coming back? Did they kill him? ” Gonzalez’s mother said.
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Gonzalez’s 22-year-old brother, Gerardo “Jerry” Gonzalez, said last week that he hoped to see a “process of strict accountability for police officers who kill people”, as well as the option of changing policy to respond to police officers’ calls for recovery. Czech and mental health crises.
There are families Filed two federal civil rights lawsuits – One for Gonzalez’s mother, for her son’s loss, and another for her son Mario, for losing her father.
Before he died, Gonzalez was caring full-time for his 23-year-old autistic brother, Efrener. While their mother was working in a gas station coffee shop, Mario would bathe Efren, cook for him, and gel his hair. She would pick up her son from preschool and then prepare meals for both of them – they liked eggs and homemade fries.
“Mario was a beautiful person, very respectful, full of love,” his mother said, adding that he loved watching movies and cooking for his son and his brother.
“She didn’t deserve to die.”
