A grand jury in Louisiana has declined to indict police officers who held a man down, with officers on top of him, and did not get up even after he repeatedly told them, “I can’t breathe.” The man died five days later.
Robert Minjarez Jr, 30, had been arrested by Carencro and Scott police and Lafayette Parish sheriff’s deputies outside a gas station, The Advertiser reports.
Because grand jury proceedings are always secret, no details were available. Jurors reviewed evidence presented by the district attorney, who had been sent an investigation report prepared by state police and the FBI.
A report from the Lafayette Parish coroner said video from the store and from police car dashcams showed that at least three or four officers remained wholly or partly on top of Minjarez after his hands and legs were cuffed.
His upper body was on the street, and his hips and legs were on the sidewalk, the report said.
For about five minutes, the report said, Minjarez is heard on audio screaming, “Help! Help! Help me! Get off! You’re going to kill me!”
The report also quotes him as saying: “You’re going to suffocate...” and “I can’t breathe” three times.
About five minutes after he was restrained, the report said, Minjarez groaned and gurgled, and an officer said: “You got 265 pounds [120kg] on your back, you’re not going anywhere.”
The coroner’s report described the main cause of Minjarez’s death as “compressional asphyxia due to face-down physical restraint by law enforcement officers.” It said contributing causes were cocaine toxicity and rhabdomyolysis — muscle breakdown which can have a number of causes.
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