The family of a 30-year-old man who died days after an encounter with Antioch police late last year has filed a wrongful death federal lawsuit against the police chief, four officers and the city.
Civil rights attorney John Burris, whose firm is representing the Angelo Quinto family, announced the lawsuit’s filing during an emotional news conference Monday afternoon at the family’s Antioch home.
Quinto, a Navy veteran with a history of mental health issues, died three days after the Dec. 23, 2020 incident. Burris said an officer placed his knee on Quinto’s neck while a second officer held his legs up and backward toward his back “for an extended time” before he lost consciousness.
Police have disputed that account but neither they nor the city attorney responded to requests for comment.
“It was excessive force and it didn’t have to happen,” Burris said in an interview before the news conference. “If you exercise a little restraint, some de-escalation to verbal discussions, without grabbing and taking him away from his mom … this never would have happened.”
Quinto’s sister, Isabella Collins, had called police because she was worried her brother might hurt her mother, Maria Cassandra Quinto-Collins, after insisting that she stay with him, Burris said.
At Monday’s news conference, an emotional Isabella Collins spoke of her brother’s loss.
“Death is permanent and we’re never ever going to get his smile back or he’s never going to irritate me again,” she said. “I miss that a lot. I wanted to see him old, I didn’t expect to go to his funeral at 18. He didn’t deserve what happened to him and nobody deserves — it hurts to remember him, it hurts to remember how he went. ”
VIDEO: Angelo Quinto’s sister reflects on her brother’s death. CLICK HERE if you’re viewing on a mobile device.
Burris said Quinto told arriving officers, “please don’t kill me,” before losing consciousness. Quinto was essentially brain dead when taken to the hospital and placed on life support, Burris said. He died several days later.
Burris likened the incident to the George Floyd killing by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020 but said the Antioch officers’ conduct was “more outrageous because when the officer who had his knee on Angelo’s neck got tired, he switched places with another officer, and that officer immediately placed his knee on Angelo’s neck.”
At a news conference this spring, Police Chief Tammany Brooks disputed such claims, saying Collins told a dispatcher her brother was being aggressive and had a hammer.
Brooks has said no officer used a knee or other body part to gain leverage or apply pressure to Quinto’s head, neck or throat, but noted that during handcuffing an officer briefly had a knee across a portion of his shoulder blade, a common control technique taught in California POST-approved police academies.
Brooks named the officers who responded — Nicholas Shipilov, Arturo Becerra, Daniel Hopwood and James Perkinson — and said they found Quinto restrained against a bedroom floor by his mother, then asked her to move so they could handcuff him. They determined he was suffering a mental health crisis and called for an ambulance, he said.
But the family’s attorneys claim when police officers entered the house, they made no effort to understand what was going on; instead, without provocation, they quickly pulled Quinto from his mother’s arms, threw him to the floor and began holding him down.
“Angelo was perfectly healthy when he was being held by his mom, but within six to eight minutes, he became brain dead,” Burris said. “And that’s the function of oxygen not getting to the brain.”
“Today, we need to change the way that we respond to mental health issues in our society, so that no one else loses their life as a result of doing nothing wrong,” Quinto’s stepfather, Robert Collins, told people gathered at the news conference. “He didn’t do anything wrong, he was suffering from a medical condition between injuries that he had. He threatened nobody, there was no violence, and he ended up dead and asphyxiated.”
In the lawsuit, Burris said not only did police violate Quinto’s civil rights but they also engaged in a “kind of conspiratorial conduct by trying to correct or distort the facts by giving false narratives about him (and potential drug use).”
Police, who didn’t publicly share details about the incident until a month later, said back then that multiple pathologists at the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office coroner’s bureau had concluded that Quinto had injuries consistent with struggling with his family and officers, but none were fatal; there were no fractures of the skull, torso or extremities; and an examination of his neck found no evidence of strangulation or crushed airway. Expanded toxicology testing is underway.
Brooks also noted then that a coroner’s inquest — a public hearing regularly held over deaths related to law enforcement — would be held and an independent third party would conduct separate investigations into Quinto’s death to determine any departmental policy violations.
More than seven months later, though, the family still does not have the autopsy report and no inquest has taken place, Burris said. The family’s independent medical examinations concluded Quinto died due to restraint asphyxiation, the attorney said.
“We have a concern here that the police made some misrepresentations about what happened here,” he said. “Basically trying to say he was under the influence of drugs and he wasn’t.”
Burris said police later searched the family’s home and “found no evidence of drug misuse or any else of significance.”
Lead attorney Ben Nisenbaum said medical and paramedic records shed light on what happened and accused police of “fabricating and lying” soon after the incident.
Nisenbaum said Quinto was restrained for more than six minutes and a recording suggested he wasn’t making a sound for about five minutes yet was still being restrained in a prone position.
He said Quinto suffered other injuries that are consistent with his head being held face down and chided Chief Brooks for saying there were no injuries consistent with asphyxiation.
“Well, petechial hemorrhages in the eyes are a prime indicator of asphyxiation and those are present,” he said. “How does that happen? Well, that happens when you have a prone restraint.”
The attorneys also noted the emotional stress and pain the family has suffered since Quinto’s death.
While acknowledging the tragedy, Quinto’s stepfather spoke of working to change the way police deal with mental health crises. He also thanked Mayor Lamar Thorpe and other council members for approving police body cameras and continuing to work on police reforms.
“You know, when this happens to your family, it’s an incredible loss, and there’s no way to bring Angelo back, and we know that,” he said. “But we want justice and we want change to come out of this, because what you can get is maybe making it a little bit better. And, you know, better for the next person who has to face this situation.”
