Sacramento Sheriff’s Office faces wrongful death claim in man’s struggle with deputies
The family of an unarmed Black man who died this month after a struggle with deputies trying to handcuff him has filed a wrongful death claim against the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office.
Mark Merin, a civil rights attorney, filed the claim against the Sheriff’s Office on behalf of Sherrano Stingley. The county has 45 days to respond to the family’s claim. The attorney said the county will likely reject the claim, which is a precursor to the family filing of a federal civil rights lawsuit.
“He was no threat and yet he ended up dead. What we’ve seen so far is one edited video that shows only a part of the story,” Merin said Wednesday at a news conference. “He didn’t just die of heart failure. He didn’t die of some kind of preexisting condition. He died because he was killed right there. He was suffocated. He was struck.”
Sgt. Amar Gandhi, a sheriff’s spokesman, declined to respond to what was said at the news conference held outside the county’s administration building in downtown Sacramento. Gandhi said the Sheriff’s Office cannot comment until the internal investigation of the incident is complete or on any pending litigation.
Two days after the incident, the Sheriff’s Office released edited body camera video that appeared to show a deputy punching Stingley in the back of the head as she and two other deputies tried to cuff him on the ground. The suspect became unresponsive shortly after being struck.
The 48-year-old man was confused, shoeless and “obviously in crisis” when the deputies confronted him, said Tanya Faison, executive director of Black Lives Matter Sacramento, which is helping the family seek justice.
Faison said Stingley’s death is another example of “cruel and inhuman vicious treatment by callous sheriff deputies against an obviously mentally ill Black man.” She said Stingley needed care and treatment but instead received “brutal deadly force.”
The Sheriff’s Office has said Stingley, an attempted burglary suspect, was hospitalized after suffering a serious medical emergency while being detained by deputies on Dec. 6. Sheriff’s officials said Stingley was unresponsive by the time the deputies placed him in handcuffs.
Medics arrived and took Stingley to Kaiser Permanente’s South Sacramento Medical Center. In a Dec. 8 news release, sheriff’s officials said that doctors determined Stingley’s “prognosis was grim.” The Sheriff’s Office announced that it had requested a “compassionate release,” which was granted by a judge to allow Stingley’s family to be with him at the hospital.
“When we came to Sacramento and went to the place where our son was at, a sergeant came up to me and told me my son was laughing and talking in the hospital,” Annette Hilburn, Stingley’s mother told reporters. “I rushed to the hospital. My son was not talking and laughing, and they had a smile on their face. They need to pay for what they did to my son.”
Stingley was placed on life support equipment at the hospital, and he died from his injuries on Dec. 16, according to Black Lives Matter Sacramento.
Andrea Moore, who spoke to reporters at the news conference in support of Stingley’s family, said they want answers as to what was the status of Stingley’s medical condition when he arrived at the hospital.
“Because what we believe is he died on camera,’’ Moore said about the deputies’ body camera footage. “And that he was propped up and put into critical condition on a breathing machine. But he never fully regained consciousness.”
Caller reported attempted catalytic converter theft
The incident began around 5:30 a.m. Dec. 6, when the Sheriff’s Office received a call reporting an attempted catalytic converter theft in the 7500 block of Whisperwillow Drive. Sheriff’s officials have said the same person called again to report that someone was attempting to kick in their front door.
Stingley was confused that morning when he was trying to enter his daughter’s south Sacramento home but was actually at a similar-looking home on the same block, according to Black Lives Matter.
A deputy arrived and found Stingley leaving the front patio of the caller’s home. The video showed Stingley at first began to run away from the first deputy but stopped moments later and put his hands up.
The deputy, carrying his duty weapon in his hand, ordered Stingley to get on the ground, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Stingley complied, but as the deputy approached to place him in handcuffs, Stingley “wrapped himself around the deputy’s legs and attempted to bring him to the ground,” sheriff’s officials said.
Two more deputies arrived to try to detain Stingley, who the Sheriff’s Office said “forcefully and actively resisted for approximately three to four minutes.”
Video of the struggle with deputies
The video from the Sheriff’s Office showed Stingley grabbed the first deputy’s flashlight before grasping his right leg with both arms. Three deputies then took Stingley to the ground, with one deputy using her knee on his backside to pin him down.
About two minutes after the initial contact, one of the three deputies appeared to strike Stingley in the back of the head after he had freed his left arm from the deputies’ restraint, the video showed. He became unresponsive about a minute later as deputies finished cuffing him. The deputies then lifted the man up to his knees, and one of them told Stingley to “wake up,” but he did not respond.
The Black Lives Matter group said the video shows three deputies “piled on Mr. Stingley, pulled his sweatshirt over his head, smashed him in the head with a flashlight, punched him and wrestled him into handcuffs,” before they noticed Stingley was non-responsive and when the deputies tried to get him to stand. They also said the deputies waited until medics arrived before offering any CPR.
Sheriff’s officials have said the deputies placed Stingley “in a recovery position and monitored his pulse” until medics arrived. They also said doctors later determined Stingley had “experienced a serious medical emergency while exerting himself during the fight.”
Dymin Stingley, Stingley’s daughter, told reporters her father did not die when the life support machines were turned off at the hospital. She said her father died 10 days earlier when the deputies fatally injured him.
“I saw how it played out, and it should not have went that way cause I know my father was trying to get home to me,” she said. “He died because he was brain dead from his injuries.”
This story was originally published December 21, 2022 at 3:48 PM.
