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GILROY — The officers involved in the violent arrest last year of a longtime Gilroy resident, who died after a drug-fueled flight from police, have been cleared of any legal wrongdoing, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office announced Friday.
The Feb. 25, 2018 death of 42-year-old Steven “Stevie” Juarez became a cause célèbre among social-justice advocates in South Santa Clara County — his family among them — who spent the ensuing months disputing the police narrative and demanding more information about the circumstances from that night.
The District Attorney’s Office released an excerpt of body-camera video footage from an officer involved in the deadly encounter, which shows several officers struggling to restrain Juarez as he lay on the ground. Police have said that at least one officer used a Taser stun gun on Juarez, which appears in the video. Also in the video, one officer strikes Juarez multiple times with a baton. Another officer ultimately subdued Juarez with a “carotid restraint,” also known as as a sleeper hold, which rendered him at least briefly unconscious.
Over the course of the video, officers could be heard yelling multiple times, “Stop resisting!” and “Give us your hands right now!”
Juarez died while he was being taken to the hospital. The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office concluded that he died from “methamphetamine intoxication complicating profound physical exertion and police restraint to include carotid sleeper hold,” according to the prosecutors’ report on the death released Friday.
In clearing the the officers of criminal liability, Assistant District Attorney Brian Welch wrote in the report that “Juarez’s behavior demonstrated a determination to resist and flee the police at any cost. There is no evidence that any officer intended to cause Juarez’s death, and there is no evidence that any officer acted with ‘conscious disregard for human life.’ ”
Sally Armendariz, Juarez’s aunt, told this news organization that they were not ready to address the report in detail, blaming a dearth of information about the case from police and prosecutors.
“At this point our family is not ready to make any kind of comment as to why the Gilroy Police Department killed our Stevie,” Armendariz said. “They are releasing what they want to the public to hear without talking to his family. As soon as we hear from the DA or Gilroy police, and they believe Stevie’s family deserves a minute of their time, we’ll call you.”
The District Attorney’s Office said Friday that, as a matter of course, it notifies relatives of the deceased before a report about an officer-involved death is released, and said they contacted a family member Friday.
According to police, officers were called just before 10 p.m. on Feb. 25 after reports of a suspicious person in a backyard in the 7400 block of Chestnut Street.
Police say Juarez ran from responding officers and while fleeing, leaped fences and climbed onto the roofs of a shed and a nearby house. According to the prosecutors’ report, Sgt. Michael McMahon was one of several officers repeatedly ordering Juarez to stop fleeing from them.
“Show me your hands! Put your hands up motherf—–! Put them up!” McMahon said, according to the report.
By the time they caught up with Juarez, officers reported that he was bleeding from his face and that a witness heard a noise consistent with a fall.
When officers tried to arrest Juarez, police said, he violently resisted and threatened them. At some point during the struggle, the officers saw that Juarez “was in medical distress” and tried to revive him. They were joined by members of the Gilroy Fire Department.
Juarez’s survivors, who include his wife and five sons, filed a claim against the city of Gilroy last fall alleging excessive force and a violation of Juarez’s civil rights. They contend that Juarez did not pose the threat that police described.
Advocates for Juarez say that they canvassed the neighborhood — where members of Juarez’s family live — and witnesses told them a different story from the one police gave. They say that Juarez was partying with a nearby resident and was on his bicycle when officers arrived, and that he was not the suspect police received the call about..
Juarez, they say, instinctively fled because he had a criminal record, history of drug addiction, and past hostile encounters with police. They also disputed that Juarez fell before the officers found him, and said that instead he was pulled down from a tree.
The prosecutors’ report released Friday affirmed part of that account, noting that one of the officers who arrested Juarez, Jason Greathead, recognized him from past violent arrests in the city. The report described Juarez as a gang member with multiple drug crime convictions, as well as two resisting-arrest convictions in 2015 in 2017.
The latter case involved a hit-and-run collision where he drove into a home, and later fought off a police dog and withstood multiple attempts to stun him with a Taser. After that arrest, an officer reported a suspicion that Juarez “was under the influence of a controlled substance because he exhibited super-human strength and the Taser had no effect,” according to the Friday report.