Overview:
In 2021, Concord nurse and father of two Ivan Gutzalenko died after being restrained by Richmond police and forcibly sedated by a paramedic.
His family filed a civil rights lawsuit, and the San Francisco jury trial is expected to end today.
Richmondside examined this issue, including the similar death of Jose Lopez in 2020, in a five-part series that was published in 2025.
The 18-year-old son of a man who died in Richmond police custody in 2021 told a federal jury that he had to raise himself into manhood, an emotional moment among many during four days of testimony that also revealed insights into the restraint tactics a civil rights lawsuit claims led to his father’s death.
Nicholas Gutzalenko, fighting back tears, said his father Ivan Gutzalenko, 47, was irreplaceable despite defense assertions that he was nonetheless successful.
“I had to raise myself into the man I am today because I didn’t have my dad after the age of 13,” Nicholas Gutzalenko testified at the trial, which began Feb. 2 in federal court in San Francisco. It’s expected to conclude Monday.
The complaint, filed by Honey Gutzalenko, the estranged wife of Gutzalenko, a registered nurse and father of two from Concord, alleges that the city of Richmond and then police Bisa Chief French maintained unconstitutional policies that permitted excessive force and failed to train officers on positional asphyxia risks, pointing to three Richmond deaths involving similar prone restraint techniques: Alan Arce and Uriah Dach in 2008, whose families settled their cases for $250,000 and $1.5 million, respectively; and Jose Luis Lopez in 2020.
Richmondside examined the Lopez and Gutzalenko cases in a five-part series, “Restrained and Sedated,” in 2025. (Read the whole series here.)
Police were responding to an incident where witnesses reported Gutzalenko was acting erratically and bleeding from a cut while walking in and out of several businesses. The first officer to arrive, Tom Tran, saw Gutzalenko collapse while saying he had trouble breathing.
As Tran and veteran Richmond officers Mark Hall and Cedric Tagorda struggled to restrain and handcuff him, American Medical Response paramedic Damon Richardson injected Gutzalenko with the sedative midazolam. Gutzalenko stopped breathing and was taken to an Oakland hospital, where he died within about 90 minutes.
Contra Costa County authorities ruled his death accidental, a result of being restrained while under the influence of methamphetamine.
In 2022, Gutzalenko’s estranged wife Honey Gutzalenko filed the wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the family, naming the three officers and Richardson. The family reached a settlement with Richardson two days before the trial started.
On Wednesday, presiding Judge Edward Chen ruled that the only officer who could face liability of assault would be Hall, who threatened Gutzalenko with a taser and pepper spray. Hall testified on Feb. 2 that he threatened Gutzalenko as a “deescalation tactic” to force him to comply.
Son says ‘I haven’t moved forward’
Gutzalenko’s son testified Wednesday that his father attended parent-teacher conferences, took him to church in San Francisco, helped him with homework during the pandemic and gave him life advice to “stay away from drugs” and other vices. His father was notably religious and had, at one time, studied at a seminary in New York with hopes of becoming ordained in Eastern Orthodoxy.
His son said he never saw his father intoxicated and that they communicated regularly by phone and FaceTime after his parents had separated in 2018.
“I called him all the time,” Nicholas said. “He was there for me and I could call him anytime of day.”
When defense attorney Kevin Gilbert noted Nicholas had achieved a 4.0 grade point average during one quarter of his senior year of high school and planned to pursue a business degree, Gutzalanko credited his father for that and rejected the suggestion that sports or other activities could replace the loss.
When Gilbert suggested he had been able to “move forward,” Nicholas Gutzalenko corrected him.
“I haven’t moved forward. It’s always in the back of my head,” he said.
Honey Gutzalenko testified that her late husband was “a very involved father” who took the children (the couple also had a daughter) camping, to church, and on trips throughout California.
She acknowledged her estranged husband struggled with “personal demons,” including abusing alcohol, cocaine and methamphetamine, but said the children were never exposed to it and didn’t learn about his substance abuse until after his death, through media reports.
She also described how her husband’s death has affected her now 16-year-old daughter, who did not testify.
“It was a very close and loving relationship. He would take her to get her nails done,” she said. “It’s affected her a lot. At her eighth-grade graduation she was disappointed that other girls were getting flowers from their dads when her dad wasn’t there to see her.”
Richmond police lieutenant defends officers’ restraint tactics
Courtesy Richmond Police Department
Lieutenant Daniel Reina, a Richmond police defensive tactics instructor who conducted the department’s internal review of Gutzalenko’s death, testified for the defense that the force used by officers was reasonable under department policy.
Reina, who has worked there for 20 years, said officers are taught to limit pressure on a subject’s back but acknowledged that it can’t always be avoided.
“We’re taught to limit it when possible,” Reina testified. “Not every situation is going to allow us to avoid the back. Based on the subject’s positioning, it’s going to require that we do apply some pressure, but the moment that subject is in custody and handcuffs, then we release it.”
Reina explained that officers are taught to end force encounters “as quickly as possible” because “force doesn’t look good” and prolonging it creates worse perceptions while also risking injury to both the person and officers.
“We never enjoy using force at all. That’s not what we’re doing it for. We’re trying to gain compliance,” Reina said.
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“We never enjoy using force at all. That’s not what we’re doing it for. We’re trying to gain compliance.”
— Richmond Police Lt. Daniel Reina
Under cross-examination by the plaintiffs’ attorney Ben Nisenbaum, Reina said the Gutzalenko case was the only in-custody death review he had conducted in his 20-year career with RPD. When asked how many use-of-force violations he had found in the hundreds of reviews he had examined, Reina said “maybe one or two.”
Nisenbaum asked Reina whether officers are taught alternative tactics that don’t involve prone restraint. Reina said it depends on the situation and that not everyone getting handcuffed needs to be placed in a prone position, but said officers cannot let a resisting person stand up.
When asked if he reviewed body camera footage showing Tran with his left leg against Gutzalenko while Gutzalenko was laid out beneath him, Reina said, “Yes, when they were trying to secure him into handcuffs,” though he couldn’t recall if that occurred while Gutzalenko was saying he couldn’t breathe.
Reina testified that the only specific force technique Richmond police policy prohibits is the carotid hold, a physical control technique that applies pressure to the sides of the neck to compress the carotid arteries. He added that any application of force must be reasonable based on the “totality of circumstances” and that officers are taught that once a subject is in handcuffs and under control, the force should cease.
Officer Cedric Tagorda returned to the stand on Wednesday to complete his testimony and acknowledged seeing Tran’s knee on Gutzalenko’s back during the restraint.
Tagorda maintained that officers needed to keep Gutzalenko restrained because he kept trying to get up, in line with similar testimony from Tran and Hall saying that paramedics wouldn’t provide medical care while he remained combative. He said Gutzalenko was only in a prone position “flush to the ground” for three to five seconds while being handcuffed.
Where and how Gutzalenko was positioned on the ground has been a key argument for both sides, with defense attorney Gilbert focusing on Gutzalenko’s history of substance abuse and toxicology levels and Nisenbaum focusing on the pressure put on Gutzalenko’s torso as well as the officers’ focus on handcuffing Gutzalenko versus addressing his breathing difficulties.
The defense is expected to present a final witness Monday morning, and closing arguments are expected to take place that afternoon.
