Man died after police ‘broke his neck during arrest’ – then held his head up for his mugshot
THE family of a Texas man who died after his neck was broken during an arrest is suing police for using “brutal, unreasonable and excessive force”.
Jorge Gonzalez Zuniga’s mugshot shows gloved hands holding his head up and a massive lump on his neck.
According to the suit, cops “tackled and assaulted” Zuniga, shocked him with a Taser, crushed his neck, handcuffed him and put him in ankle restraints, intentionally tripped him while shackled, and Tased him again when he could not get up.
Following the arrest, Zuniga never received proper care for his injuries and became fully paralyzed, the complaint filed by his family said. The 23-year-old father died three months later.
On April 12, the day of his arrest, Zuniga was attending a BBQ in a trailer park in Elsa, a town near McAllen, Texas.
Police responded to a dispute unrelated to the BBQ in a nearby area and then found Zuniga asleep on the ground following the party, according to both the complaint and an affidavit of probable cause filed by one of the four cops named as defendants in the complaint.
The cops told Zuniga to go home. His loved ones say he was in the process of doing so when the police jumped him. Zuniga was ultimately arrested for public intoxication, violation of the statewide emergency order in force at the time, and resisting arrest, the affidavit said.
Zuniga was taken to jail, and instead of assessing and treating his injuries, cops acted with “deliberate indifference” and threw him in the “drunk tank,” according to the complaint.
No one checked on him for another 21 hours after his booking and he was discovered unresponsive and taken to the hospital around midnight on April 13, the complaint said.
At the hospital, he was diagnosed with a dangerously low body temperature (82.4 F), a severe cervical fracture, a broken spinal cord and paralysis from the neck down, meaning he was quadriplegic, the complaint said.
He underwent multiple surgeries while connected to a ventilator because he could not breathe on his own due to paralysis.
A doctor recommended Zuniga be moved to a long-term treatment facility, but he was uninsured, so he was sent home, according to the family’s Gofundme.
Zuniga died of a heart attack due to complications from his injuries on July 15, the complaint said.
His mother and wife stayed at his bedside. “Every day that I would see him in the hospital bed, not being able to move, would kill me,” Zuniga’s mother said in a statement through her lawyer.
“They took my companion – the love of my life,” Zuniga’s widow said, also in statement through the lawyer.
“I just ask for fair justice because he was a human being, not an animal. He didn’t deserve to suffer the way he did and no one does. He was only 23 and had a 1-year-old child – he will never play with his son again.”
Texas Rangers said at the time they were investigating the case.
A Hidalgo County grand jury voted on August 20 not to indict the arresting for manslaughter, according to local news outlet The Monitor.
Most read in News
On September 26, protesters marched outside the Hidalgo County District Attorney’s Office to demand evidence revealed by the Texas Rangers’ investigation by released to the public.
Zuniga’s sister said during the protest that the arresting officers and the cops that booked her brother and held his head up in the mugshot deserved jail time.
They “need to be jailed in the same way they jail other people,” she said in a speech. “Because we’re all the same and no one makes them superior over us.”