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A U.S. Navy veteran who was experiencing a mental health crisis died after a police officer helped him kneel on his neck for several minutes, suffocating him, his family’s lawyers said.
Angelo Quinto, 30, was suffering from a bout of paranoia, anxiety and depression at his family’s home in Antioch, Northern California, when his sister Isabella Collins called police on December 23.
According to an account given by the family in a recorded press conference, the responding officer grabbed Quinto by his mother’s arms who was trying to calm him down, then knelt on her neck for nearly five minutes while another officer held his legs. .
In a cell phone video recorded by his mother, Cassandra Quinto-Collins, her son is seen lying lifeless on the ground with blood on his face and on the ground below him. He is heard saying: “What happened? Do you have a pulse? ”As officers begin to pump his chest in an attempt to resuscitate him.
Quinto was taken unconscious to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead three days later.
The family’s lawyers have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Antioquia, accusing the police of having carried out an illegal strangulation. The family’s attorney, John Burris, told ABC Channel 7 News: “Given what we know, a healthy young man in his mother’s arms, they took his life.”
Burris said the family intends to file a federal lawsuit related to Quinto’s death at a later date.
He told the Associated Press that the case, and the alleged use of a strangulation, bore similarities to George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis last May, prompting a nationwide eruption of protests against police brutality.
Huge protests ranged from a resurgence and expansion of the Black Lives Matter movement and demands for radical reforms to end institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system and throughout American society.
“I refer to it as the George Floyd technique, that is what took his life and that cannot be a legal technique. We not only see violations of his civil rights, but also violations of the rights of his mother and sisters, who saw what happened to him, ”Burris said.
Antioch police have so far declined to comment. After the family’s lawsuit was filed last week, the police department said it could not provide information as the investigation was ongoing.
One question that will likely figure in the investigation and in any ongoing court case is why the responding police officers appeared not to be wearing body cameras when they entered Quinto’s home. The family also wants to know why the officers reacted to Quinto so abruptly by taking him from his mother’s arms, even though they had been warned that he had mental health problems.
The AP reported that Quinto, who was born in the Philippines, was honorably discharged from the Navy in 2019. The family said he had long battled depression, with more recent bouts of paranoia and anxiety.
The man’s sister, Collins, told the AP that she now regretted calling the police for help. “I asked the detectives if there was another number I should have called, and they said there wasn’t and I did the right thing. But right now I can tell you that the right thing would not have killed my brother. “
