It's been six years since the death of Trinidad immigrant Kenwin Garcia, and there are still unanswered questions about how Garcia died after New Jersey state troopers stopped him along a highway in Hanover Township.
Garcia's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit after the 25-year-old black man was allegedly beaten, handcuffed, forced to the ground and hogtied along Interstate 287 on July 15, 2008, NJ Advance Media reported. The temperature was at least 85 degrees that day.
The state's investigation into Garcia's death concluded he died from a medical condition known as excited delirium, which is caused by a sudden spike in adrenaline that leads to cardiac arrest. But a five-month NJ Advance Media investigation exposed a pattern of missing evidence and a cause of death based on an obscure medical syndrome that relieved police of any wrongdoing.
Garcia told responding officer Victor Pereira he was going to the beach when he was stopped shortly before 6 p.m. Pereira checked his background and learned Garcia was wanted on a 2006 bench warrant. Garcia was handcuffed and placed in the backseat of the patrol car.
Garcia complained of being unable to breathe and repeatedly asked for water. But Pereira and another trooper who arrived, David Jenkins, ignored him. When Pereira refused to let Garcia roll down the window, Garcia smashed the rear window on the passenger side with his feet, according to police records obtained by NJ Advance Media.
An altercation ensued, more police arrived, and Garcia smashed the window of another patrol car before he was placed on the ground and hogtied on the highway's shoulder. Garcia was pepper sprayed and turned on his stomach while police used their knees and hands to force him to stop squirming. At the time his hands and feet were already handcuffed.
During the incident, the dashboard cameras in five law enforcement vehicles were not recording and one was switched off. Neither were any of the 911 calls made at the time recorded. Hanover Township officials said its antiquated 911 system malfunctioned that day.
By 6:33 p.m., police noted Garcia seemed to calm down and they reassured each other he was still conscious. But when emergency responders arrived, Garcia had no pulse, according to ambulance reports.
Garcia's limp body was taken to a hospital where he died a week later after being taken off life support, a fate eerily similar to the July chokehold death of Eric Garner during an arrest attempt on Staten Island and to Michael Brown's shooting death by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer in August.
An autopsy revealed Garcia's brain was starved of oxygen and that he suffered a torn kidney, a broken breastbone and cracked ribs. There was also extensive internal bleeding. Responding officers, however, maintained Garcia was never struck or beaten, according to reports obtained by NJ Advance Media.
The medical examiner ruled Garcia's death a homicide caused by "excited delirium associated with blunt force trauma occurred during violent struggle while resisting arrest."
Medical experts say excited delirium is prevalent in those who are mentally ill who already have high levels of adrenaline. That includes Garcia, who showed signs of delirium by walking on a highway towards a beach nowhere near his location, according to former Texas medical examiner and excited delirium expert Vincent Di Maio.
Garcia would most likely have become excited during the arrest, leading to a lethal rush of hormones that traveled to the heart and eventually caused cardiac arrest, Di Maio, who co-wrote a book on the condition, told NJ Advance Media.
But for Eric Balaban of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, the medical examiner is just one of many who use the condition as an excuse to shift the blame from police for a suspect's death.
"This is a 'diagnosis' or cause of death used exclusively by medical examiners that can absolve officers of any wrongdoing and serve as a basis for an official whitewash and a failure to investigate what could be incidents involving excessive and deadly force," Balaban said.
NJ Advance Media went to four other medical experts who studied Garcia's autopsy and concluded he could have suffocated or asphyxiated due to being restrained.
"He had a lacerated kidney, two quarts of internal bleeding," said Michael Baden, former chief medical examiner for New York City. "He complained of inability to breathe, and had fractured ribs and sternum, which indicates a lot of trauma to his chest. He died of trauma caused by inability to breathe and lacerations of internal organs."
Being hogtied, which is banned in several cities, can also restrict a person's breathing, especially in defenseless suspects like the mentally ill. It's not clear if Garcia was ever diagnosed with a mental illness but his family suspected he was sick.
Even with the controversy surrounding excited delirium, the state Attorney General's Office still brought the medical examiner's conclusions to the grand jury, which ruled the officers involved did not use excessive force. The Attorney General's Office also determined the officers' actions were justified.
The state troopers, the medical examiner and the lawyers involved declined to comment on Garcia's case. The Attorney General's Office declined to release the grand jury transcripts.
Attorney General spokesman Peter Aseltine would not comment on why asphyxia was not considered as a cause of death, but said "a finding of asphyxia was not supported by the autopsy in the Garcia case," NJ Advance Media reported. The medical examiner's findings were based in part on Di Maio's book.
Garcia's family settled its wrongful death suit for $700,000 in 2013. But while state attorneys, troopers and medical experts deny responsibility, the victim's family believes Garcia was ultimately murdered because of his race. The race of the officers involved was never officially stated, but according to dashboard camera footage, they seem white.
"To me it's racism," Annette Garcia Jobe, the victim's mother, told NJ Advance Media. "He look a certain way and they probably put him in a certain category, but he is not that type of person.
"I saw how they treated my son. They treated him like a dog. And these are supposed to be people who are representing the law."
