A Navy veteran tragically died after a California police knelt on his neck for five minutes during one of his paranoia episodes, his grieving family claims.
30-year-old Angelo Quinto reportedly died in a hospital three days after the encounter with Antioch Police Department, the Daily Mail reported.
According to reports, the family called 911 to help Quinto out during a mental health episode.
Quinto’s heartbroken mother, Cassandra Quinto-Collins, saw the entire ordeal and filmed part of the incident on her phone.
She said that her son was begging the cops not to kill him.
The grieving family has now filed a legal claim against the police department and claims Antioch Police has not been transparent about the incident.
The family’s civil rights attorney, John Burris, said at a press conference: “They put… the knee on the back of his neck and pressed down for about five minutes and snuffed his life out.
“This was a healthy person before, no physical problems… and within moments, his life is gone.”
The family says that Quinto, who was honorably discharged from the Navy in 2019, had slipped into a paranoia episode in December.
His frantic sister called 911 when he started acting erratically. Officers arrived then flipped the 30-year-old onto his stomach, pinned him to the ground, and handcuffed him.
The mother and sister said that one cop held his legs down while the other knelt on Quinto’s neck.
“He said, ‘Please don’t kill me,” she told KTVU.
The mother started filming the incident on her phone when she realized that her son was no longer moving but the clip doesn’t show the cop kneeling on his neck.
She can be heard asking the cops: “What happened? Can you take him, please?”
As the officers put him on a stretcher, the mother asked: “Does he have a pulse?”
Sadly, Quinto died three days later.
Lt. John Fortner said in a statement: “Once some additional portions of the investigation are completed, APD will be getting together with all the involved agencies to provide more information to the public.”
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