What's at stake?
The City of Fresno paid out $6 million, while Fersno County coughed up $4 million.
After nearly a decade of questions, legal fights and frustrations, a Fresno family won more than $10 million in a settlement with law enforcement and the ambulance company that killed 41-year-old Joseph Perez in 2017.
Perez family attorney Neil Gehlawat confirmed the settlement Thursday morning in a telephone interview with Fresnoland.
“No one could have anticipated it would take nine years to get this done, and I think a lot of families would have given up,” Gehlawat told Fresnoland. “But they were steadfast in making sure they could get justice.”
Alleging wrongful death, gross negligence and constitutional violations, the Perez family sought justice from the city and county of Fresno and the parent corporation of the ambulance company that responded to the scene in 2017.
According to Perez family attorneys, the City of Fresno agreed to pay $6 million, while Fresno County ponied up $4 million. The family also reached a confidential settlement with the ambulance company in a deal that didn’t identify the company by name.
In previous court filings, the company has been identified as American Ambulance.
Officials with City Hall, Fresno County and the American Ambulance company did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday morning.
‘I can’t breathe’
On May 17, 2017, Fresno County sheriff’s deputies received a report of a man – later identified as Perez – erratically screaming and running across busy city streets. Coincidentally, around the same time, Fresno police officers spotted Perez, who they said appeared to be high and was waving his arms and yelling.
Police said they detained Perez for his own safety near the busy intersection at Palm and Santa Fe Avenues. Police and sheriff’s deputies planned to have Perez evaluated by an ambulance crew for a possible psychiatric detention but said Perez became combative and refused to sit back down.
“In response, several of the officers took Perez to the ground to prevent him from running into traffic,” a federal appeals court said in 2024. “While on the ground, one officer struck Perez’s left side three times with his knee and then applied a wrist lock.”
During a subsequent struggle, Perez – who was already in handcuffs – wound up face down on the pavement, where he hit his head numerous times, causing several bloody injuries. Officers applied a “RIPP restraint” to Perez’s feet and looped that restraint to his handcuffs, a move the family’s attorneys have described as a “hogtie.”
“The officers unlooped the restraint from Perez’s handcuffs when EMS arrived — approximately thirty seconds to a minute after they applied this restraint,” the court wrote in 2024.
An American Ambulance paramedic retrieved a backboard and said he wanted to attach it to Perez’s back while he was on the ground so he could be flipped over and taken away.
“As this was happening, Perez yelled that he could not breathe.”
The paramedic “nevertheless told one of the officers to sit on the backboard,” the court wrote. “The officer complied and sat on the board for one minute and thirteen seconds while other officers applied pressure and worked with (the paramedic) to secure the backboard.”
It took approximately two more minutes before they flipped Perez over and eventually discovered he no longer had a pulse. He was pronounced dead at the hospital a short time later.
“While the impact of these actions is heart-rending, and (the paramedic’s) conduct may have fallen well short of any reasonable standard of care,” the court wrote, “the record establishes that he was trying to render medical aid to Perez.”
A coroner’s report concluded Perez’s death was a homicide – a death at the hands of another person – and listed the cause of death as “compression asphyxia during restraint with methamphetamine toxicity as another significant contributor.”
The Fresno County District Attorney’s Office, Sheriff’s Office, Fresno Police Department and Fresno’s Office of Independent Review all concluded the law enforcement officers’ actions were justified and within policy.
Federal courts sided with the city and county law enforcement officers in 2024, ruling that while a jury might find Perez’s rights were violated, the officers, deputies and paramedics at the scene were entitled to “qualified immunity,” a protection created by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982 that generally shields government workers from liability.
The coroner’s office ultimately classified the death as a homicide.
While Perez’s case happened about three years before the 2020 killing of George Floyd at the hands of police, the similarities fueled renewed scrutiny in the Fresno case – and national media attention – in 2021 after the family’s attorneys released police body camera footage of the incident.
Gehlawat said the settlement, reached in early July, comes as a relief to the Perez family after nearly a decade of fighting.
“Overall, they’re relieved it’s over and they can finally have justice for their son, father and husband.”
