A US navy veteran who was experiencing a mental health crisis died after a police officer called out to help him knelt on his neck for several minutes, asphyxiating him, lawyers for his family have said.
Angelo Quinto, 30, was suffering a bout of paranoia, anxiety and depression in his family home in Antioch, northern California, when his sister Isabella Collins called police on 23 December.
According to an account given by the family at a recorded press conference, the responding officer grabbed Quinto from the arms of his mother who was trying to calm him, then knelt on his neck for almost five minutes while his legs were being held by another officer.
In a cellphone video recorded by his mother, Cassandra Quinto-Collins, her son is seen lying limp on the floor with blood on his face and on the floor beneath him. She is heard saying: “What happened? Does he have a pulse?”, as officers begin pumping his chest in an attempt to resuscitate him.
Quinto was taken unconscious to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead three days later.
Lawyers for the family have filed a wrongful death claim against the city of Antioch, accusing police of having carried out an illegal chokehold. The family’s lawyer, John Burris, told the ABC channel 7 News: “Given what we know, a healthy young man in his mother’s arms, they stuffed the life out of him.”
Burris said that the family intends to file a federal lawsuit relating to Quinto’s death at a later date.
He told the Associated Press that the case, and the alleged use of a chokehold, bore similarities with the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last May which sparked a nationwide eruption of protest against police brutality.
Huge protests spread into a revival and expansion of the Black Lives Matter movement and demands for radical reforms to end institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system and across American society.
“I refer to it as the George Floyd technique, that’s what snuffed the life out of him and that cannot be a lawful technique. We see not only violations of his civil rights but also violations against 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 legal claim was filed last week, the police department said it was unable to provide information as the investigation was ongoing.
One question that is likely to feature in the investigation and any developing court cases is why the responding police officers appeared not to be wearing body cameras when they entered Quinto’s home. The family also want to know why the officers reacted to Quinto so abruptly in taking him from his mother’s arms, even though they had been forewarned that he was having mental health difficulties.
The AP reported that Quinto, who was born in the Philippines, was honorably discharged from the navy in 2019. The family said that he had long struggled with depression, with more recent episodes of paranoia and anxiety.
The man’s sister, Collins, told 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 told me that there wasn’t and that I did the right thing. But right now I can tell you that the right thing would not have killed my brother.”
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