The family of a Cathedral City man allege in a federal lawsuit that his in-custody death last year was the result of excessive force.
The wrongful death suit names Riverside County, Cathedral City, deputies assigned to the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning and four arresting Cathedral City police officers as defendants.
Representatives from the county or Cathedral City could not immediately be reached for comment on the suit stemming from the March 24, 2017, death of Phillip Soto Garcia Jr., 51.
Garcia, who family members say suffered an “involuntary severe psychiatric episode” that was “completely out of character for him,” died in a Moreno Valley hospital two days after he was arrested following a suspicious circumstances call that brought officers to his home.
Family members allege in the lawsuit filed Monday that officers violently took Garcia to the ground during his arrest, causing a serious head injury, then jail staff later beat him and left him alone in a “sobering cell” at the county’s Banning jail for more than 20 hours, all while not providing him with treatment suited for a patient suffering from a mental health episode.
Cathedral City police were called to the residence by neighbors claiming that Garcia had broken one of their windows and was acting bizarrely, including yelling outside, according to the lawsuit.
The officers wrestled Garcia “to the ground so hard that his head left a semi-circle of blood spatter on the concrete,” the lawsuit alleges.
He was then taken to a hospital, where his apparent bizarre behavior continued, which family members allege can be explained by his medical history, which included seizures and a neurological condition.
He was booked into the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility on the morning of March 22, where he was placed in isolation, according to the complaint. After slamming his head against the walls and tearing down ceiling tiles, deputies placed him in restraints “for an extended period of time without providing him adequate hydration, psychiatric intervention, medical monitoring, supervision and without basic human compassion or care in violation of his constitutional rights,” the suit alleges.
He was then brought to the Riverside University Health System Medical Center in Moreno Valley, where he “never regained mental awareness” and died just after 3 a.m. March 24.
The suit alleges that his cause of death was not revealed to family members for about a year, before an amendment to the death certificate this year listed multiple factors under cause of death, including “homicide,” “sudden death in schizophrenia,” “seizure disorder” and “self-initiated physical exertion with control methods applied by law enforcement while in custody.”
In addition to utilizing excessive force, the suit alleges that Garcia was improperly classified as a “criminal detainee” instead of a person suspected of having a mental illness or episode, and that improper training may have also played a role in his treatment and subsequent death.
Plaintiffs in the suit include Garcia’s wife and three sons.
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