Police, family offer views of Anaheim confrontation that ended with man in coma

The family of a man who ended up in a coma after a confrontation with Anaheim police officers has hired the lawyer who represented the father of Kelly Thomas, a mentally ill homeless man who died after an encounter with Fullerton police in July 2011.

On Saturday, police stopped Fermin Valenzuela of Anaheim for questioning after getting a call at 9:15 a.m. about a suspicious man following a woman home in the 2600 block of West Broadway Avenue, according to Anaheim police officials. Sgt. Daron Wyatt said Valenzuela became combative as officers tried to handcuff and arrest him for possession of drug paraphernalia.

“Almost immediately upon contact, a physical altercation started,� Wyatt said. The incident lasted eight to 10 minutes and Valenzuela suddenly stopped breathing, prompting officers to apply first aid, he said.

Paramedics rushed to the laundromat where police had stopped Valenzuela and transported him to the West Anaheim Medical Center, where family members soon gathered.

“We don’t know if he’s going to make it,� said Valenzuela’s former wife, Patricia Gonzalez, who wept during a phone interview. “Oh, my God, what are we going to do?�

Since Valenzuela, a father of two, arrived at the hospital, “he has not voluntarily spoken or moved,� said Garo Mardirossian, the attorney the family hired. “We have a 32-year-old, otherwise healthy young man who has a serious brain injury as a result of his encounter with people who are supposed to protect him. Whether he is perceived to be following someone is not the point. Police reaction is my concern.�

He said officers beat his client and shocked him with a Taser. Before authorities stopped him, Valenzuela had been walking “in the direction of his aunt’s home, the guardian who raised him,� Mardirossian said.

Valenzuela did not have any pre-existing conditions that would cause heart failure, Mardirossian said, adding that he was waiting to review video footage from police body cameras to help piece together what happened.

“I’m just dumbfounded. There’s no evidence that he grabbed a gun. But there was some kind of excessive force used or restraint to cause him to go into cardiac arrest,� Mardirossian said.

The run-in with Anaheim officers occurred nearly five years after Kelly Thomas, who suffered from schizophrenia, died after being beaten in a confrontation with Fullerton police. A jury acquitted Officers Jay Cicinelli and Manuel Ramos of murder and manslaughter charges in January 2014. Mardirossian represented Kelly Thomas’ father, Tom Thomas, who reached a $4.9-million settlement with the city of Fullerton in November 2015 in a wrongful-death lawsuit.

In Valenzuela’s case, Mardirossian said he was requesting surveillance video from stores in the area where the confrontation occurred.

Gonzalez said she does not “have all the facts� about what happened Saturday, except “he was definitely Tasered. From everything we’ve been told, we have no doubt about that.�

Wyatt, of the Anaheim police, said he was unsure of the “exact force� Valenzuela was using or how police responded. He could not answer questions about police Taser use, citing an ongoing investigation. Video from the scene has been turned over to the Orange County district attorney’s office, he said.

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