(Reuters) – Prosecutors in California announced involuntary manslaughter charges against three police officers for the 2021 death of a man in their custody, reversing the outcome of an earlier investigation that had cleared the officers.
Officers in Alameda, California, pinned Mario Gonzalez, 26, to the ground for about five minutes before leaving him unresponsive during an arrest on April 19, 2021, according to body camera footage released by the city after his death.
An attorney for the officers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gonzalez’s death in Alameda, a city of nearly 80,000 people bordering Oakland, came the day before a Minneapolis jury convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin of killing George Floyd, amid nationwide protests against police brutality and racial inequality.
An initial investigation into the case by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office found in 2022 that the officers were not liable for Gonzalez’s death.
But the bureau’s Public Accountability Unit, a new department opened by District Attorney Pamela Price in 2023 after she was elected, reopened and reinvestigated the case, leading to the indictment announced Thursday.
The three officers charged Thursday were sent to a park in 2021 to check on Gonzalez after residents reported a man hanging around and talking to himself, according to recordings of 911 emergency calls released by the city.
The officers’ body camera footage showed them struggling to detain Gonzalez and handcuff him for just over five minutes as they tried to take him into custody.
After Gonzalez became unresponsive, officers used chest compressions until paramedics arrived. Gonzalez died later that day at a hospital.
An initial autopsy had attributed Gonzalez’s death to the toxic effects of methamphetamine, as well as morbid obesity, alcoholism and “physiological stress from altercation and restraint.”
A second autopsy, cited by prosecutors in announcing the new charges against the officers Thursday, described his death as “a result of forcible asphyxiation.”
(Reporting by Julia Harte; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
