{"id":17941,"date":"2025-06-27T02:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T02:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/17941\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T02:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T02:52:10","slug":"judge-ignored-triable-issues-in-death-of-man-restrained-by-deputies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/17941\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge ignored ‘triable issues’ in death of man restrained by deputies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"San<\/a>A badge for a San Diego sheriff\u2019s deputy. (File photo courtesy San Diego County Sheriff\u2019s Office)<\/p>\n

A state appeals panel on Thursday revived a lawsuit brought against San Diego County by the family of a man who died in San Marcos shortly after sheriff\u2019s deputies restrained him.<\/p>\n

The ruling concerns the October 2017 death of Kristopher Birtcher, 34, who was shot with a stun gun and subdued by responding deputies outside a Hobby Lobby store.<\/p>\n

Deputies and a psychiatric emergency team had responded to reports of a disoriented man who was possibly on drugs near the front entrance of the store.<\/p>\n

The sheriff\u2019s department said Birtcher tried to flee, but was brought to the ground by deputies who at some point deployed an electric stun gun. The sheriff\u2019s department also said Birtcher fought with deputies and spat at them during the incident.<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s ruling from a three-justice panel of the Fourth District Court of Appeal<\/a> states the deputies handcuffed Birtcher, placed him on the ground on his stomach and \u201capplied bodyweight pressure to his back while he was lying face down on the pavement.\u00a0While restrained in this prone position, Birtcher gasped, `Can\u2019t breathe,\u2019 and called out for help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Believing that Birtcher might be suffering a drug overdose, naloxone was administered. He died a short time later.<\/p>\n

The ruling states a medical examiner found that his cause of death was \u201csudden cardiac arrest while restrained,\u201d with acute methamphetamine intoxication as a contributing factor. Eight deputies who took part in the arrest were later cleared of criminal liability by the San Diego County District Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

A lawsuit was filed on behalf of Birtcher\u2019s minor daughter, but Judge Blaine Bowman ruled last year in favor of the county and dismissed the case with prejudice.<\/p>\n

The appellate ruling states the plaintiffs argued the manner in which Birtcher was restrained constituted excessive force, while the judge concluded the way it was conducted was \u201cby the book\u201d and \u201cas it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

The appellate justices disagreed, stating there were \u201ctriable issues\u201d that could lead a potential jury to find the deputies used excessive force by holding Birtcher down in a prone position.<\/p>\n

The appellate panel also disagreed with Bowman on a separate finding that then-Sheriff Bill Gore couldn\u2019t be held liable for negligent training of the deputies. <\/p>\n

While the county asserted Gore couldn\u2019t be liable because he was not personally involved in the deputies\u2019 training, the appellate ruling states there was no evidence submitted \u201cto show that Sheriff Gore did not play a role in the department\u2019s training policies or the deputies\u2019 training, or that he had no knowledge or notice of deficiencies in the training policies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A badge for a San Diego sheriff\u2019s deputy. (File photo courtesy San Diego County Sheriff\u2019s Office) A state…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,17229,1582,276,17230,17231,3549,10860,17023,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-17941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-bill-gore","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-fourth-district-court-of-appeal","13":"tag-overturned","14":"tag-san-diego","15":"tag-san-diego-county-sheriffs-department","16":"tag-san-diego-superior-court","17":"tag-sandiego","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}