Nearly four years after a 30-year-old man died while face down and handcuffed in the back of an Edinburg police unit, the city has settled a lawsuit with his widow, mother and four minor children.
Christopher Reyes died on June 18, 2017, after Edinburg police responded to what they described as “a male and female disturbance” at the Greenbriar Apartments.
In a custodial death report, police said Christopher was hallucinating that he was fighting three men and alleged that he began to resist arrest. Edinburg police handcuffed him and placed him in the back of a police unit and said that he was kicking and yelling.
However, Christopher became quiet and police say that when they pulled him out of the unit he was “purple in color” and “not responsive.” The upper half of his body was wedged between the backseat and the driver side and his bottom half was on top of the right side seat.
Christopher’s mother, Noreen Reyes, and his widow, Brenda M. Tamez, spoke with The Monitor following the filing of their lawsuit and disputed nearly every aspect of the custodial death report’s narrative, including a police assertion that Christopher told officers to shoot him.
Noreen and Tamez were both present when Christopher died.
His mother is the one who told Tamez to call police because her son was battling cocaine addiction and having a hallucination.
He had previously sought help after a similar episode and was on a waiting list to enter a rehab facility. Noreen had been told that if he had an episode involving hallucinations she needed to call police and get him to the hospital. The hope was that if the rehab facility knew this they could get him treatment faster.
That’s not what happened that day.
Christopher’s certified death certificate, which Noreen showed to The Monitor, says he died from cocaine toxicity associated with increased physical stress and restraint with restricted body position.
A more detailed report also attributed his death to mechanical asphyxiation, Noreen said in 2019.
Attorneys Edward A. Stapleton III and Michael Gonzalez initially filed the lawsuit on Christopher’s family’s behalf on June 7, 2019, in state district court in Hidalgo County.
The city of Edinburg then removed the litigation to federal court on Nov. 4, 2019.
The attorneys alleged that the police department’s “indifference” resulted in Christopher’s death, noting that an officer at the scene, Rodolfo Lejia, looked into the unit and saw that Christopher was upside down but did nothing to help the man out of his position, which was caught on dash cam.
Five minutes later, that dash cam video shows that Christopher’s stomach stops moving, according to the lawsuit.
Norma Farley, a forensic pathologist who reviewed the dash cam, said the man’s face couldn’t be seen in the video because he was lodged between the back seat and a metal cage barrier, the litigation says.
“Mr. Reyes’ hands were cuffed behind his back making it impossible for him to gain leverage and remove himself from the wedged position he was in, which ultimately caused his death by asphyxiation,” the lawsuit states.
Noreen believes her son tried to let police know by yelling and kicking from inside the unit, which police said in the custodial death report was disruptive behavior.
The litigation also alleges that Edinburg police denied Christopher medical treatment, with the petition noting that EMS arrived at the scene to help but were turned away by police who said Christopher was being combative.
“The policy or custom was shortsighted and illegitimate because its objective was to address an alleged criminal act of public intoxication instead of the underlying medical objective for the 911 call made by Mr. Reyes’ mother at the outset,” the petition states.
The lawsuit also alleged that the city of Edinburg was negligent and caused Christopher’s death.
The city denied the allegations in responses to the lawsuit and had previously filed a motion to dismiss and a motion for summary judgment.
The details of the settlement aren’t included in the court record and the proposal hasn’t yet been signed off on by the federal judge handling the case.
