Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price has filed involuntary manslaughter charges against three city of Alameda police officers who killed Mario Gonzalez three years ago while they were trying to restrain the 26-year-old Oakland resident.
The officers—Eric McKinley, James Fisher, and Cameron Leahy—responded to a call about a man behaving oddly and talking to himself in a public park near the South Shore Shopping Center on April 19, 2021.
In body-camera video that was released by the Alameda Police Department weeks after the incident, two officers attempted to place Gonzalez in handcuffs. Gonzalez struggled and the officers took him to the ground and cuffed him behind his back. As the officers pinned him down and held his legs and arms, Gonzalez shouted and grunted in growing distress. Eventually, the young man went limp. One of the officers said, “he’s going unresponsive.” After checking Gonzalez for a pulse, the officers began CPR.
Gonzalez’s death, the coroner determined, was a homicide, but it was due mainly to the “toxic effects of methamphetamine.”
Gonzalez’s family and their attorney disputed this, saying the police needlessly escalated a harmless situation and killed Gonzalez by using unreasonable force and that the drugs found in his system were not concentrated enough to kill him.
A second independent autopsy, requested by Gonzalez’s family and their attorney, concluded that he died of “restraint asphyxiation.”
In 2022, outgoing District Attorney Nancy O’Malley concluded her office’s investigation of the incident, deciding that the officers hadn’t broken any laws. When Pamela Price took over the DA’s office the next year, she pledged to reexamine the case, along with other controversial in-custody deaths in the county.
Price, who is facing a recall election, campaigned on a platform that included holding police accountable for killing unarmed people or using unreasonable force.
Her office is also prosecuting San Leandro Police Officer Jason Fletcher, who is charged with manslaughter for shooting a man inside a Walmart in 2020; and Oakland Police Officer Phong Tran, who is accused of bribery and witness tampering in a case that led to two homicide convictions getting overturned. Fletcher’s attorneys recently won a motion to recuse Price’s office from the case after arguing Price has exhibited bias. Price is appealing that decision.
Gonzalez’s family settled a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Alameda last year for $11 million, which will go to Gonzalez’s 7-year-old son. His mother also received $350,000 from the city to end the case.
The three officers are scheduled to be arraigned at the Wiley Manuel Courthouse in Oakland on May 30.
