Restrained and Sedated
Since 2020 two people have died after being forcibly sedated while restrained by Richmond police.
A Richmondside review of public records reveals inconsistencies between how the cases were investigated by the county coroner.
In this five-part series, Richmondside examines who the two people were, what happened when they died and whether systemic changes are being made to help prevent such deaths.
I’ve been in a number of newsrooms, big and small, witnessing how journalism can impact local communities such as Richmond, sparking changes and bringing awareness to things that would otherwise go unnoticed. Richmondside’s Restrained and Sedated series was born from one of those less noticed, arguably underreported stories that I, at one point, didn’t think would ever be published.
The “six degrees of separation” theory is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from one another. In the Richmond area, where I grew up, I’ve always felt it was closer to three. It’s a small city with boundaries that weave in and out of surrounding cities and neighborhoods, creating a tapestry of community where residents often have acquaintances in common.
So when I started my career as a reporter, working as a fellow for a publication in San Francisco, I wasn’t surprised to eventually find I had a close connection to a story that I was assigned to cover.
It was October of 2022 and I was working an evening shift covering breaking news when Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton announced that none of the Richmond police officers who had a violent struggle in 2020 with a man who died in-custody would face charges.
His name was Jose Luis Lopez and few details were released about what happened to him. I discovered that not one publication, up until that point, had looked deeply into the incident, perhaps because Richmond, like many small cities nationwide, no longer had its own independent daily newspaper or perhaps because he died three days after every county in the Bay Area was shut down due to COVID.
I filed a California Public Records Act request, asking for police body camera footage and any related internal police documents. By January of 2023 I had received some of the records, and I immersed myself in the details. Similarly to the DA’s report, the documents were heavily redacted, but I discovered that key details, such as the fact that Lopez had been sedated by a paramedic while heavily restrained, were missing from the coroner’s report, and some of the information released by the police didn’t match what I saw happening on police body camera videos. I knew there was more to the story, and I kept digging.
I realized I had met the man who died after being restrained by police and sedated by a paramedic
One of the first things I did was try to reach Lopez’s family, scouring Facebook and other social media platforms for contact information. I realized that I had met Lopez when I was a teen growing up in west Contra Costa County.
My father, Joel Umanzor Sr., a Baptist minister of a Spanish-speaking congregation at Primera Iglesia Bautista on the border of Pinole and San Pablo, had introduced me to him as they spoke outside of the church doors one day in the mid-2000s. His uncle was a member of my dad’s church, and I remembered how full of life Lopez was, how he loved singing and music and had told my dad that in their conversations. I’d also attended a youth group with Lopez’s younger cousin, who was good friends with a cousin of mine.
That connection helped me get in touch with a family member, who confirmed that the man who died was the same Jose Luis who I had met. She answered many questions and introduced me to his sister, Petronila Fernandes, and her husband Filipe Fernandes.
I first met Filipe Fernandes at a cafe in El Cerrito in 2023. (Lopez’s sister initially didn’t join us because her husband first wanted to get to know me and build trust with me.)
Over coffee and tea, he shared the many questions that still hadn’t been answered for the family and told me how Lopez’s unexpected death had negatively affected his wife’s mental health.
He said that none of the police body camera footage or public records had been shared with the family — more than two years after his death and months after the district attorney’s decision to not prosecute the officers. They didn’t know the extent of the physical struggle between Lopez and police officers and were shocked when they watched the body camera videos I’d obtained.
After establishing trust with Filipe Fernandes, I met Petronila Fernandes, interviewing them both multiple times over the course of four months. They introduced me to other family members who lived in Richmond and in Nicaragua, including his mother, so I could learn more about who he was.
Discovery of second in-custody death after sedation expands investigation significantly
The story seemed to be coming together just as my reporting fellowship was ending, and I was looking for a permanent reporting job.
But for reasons that were not explained to me, the publishing was put on hold. When I left in June of 2023 to work for another news outlet my editor said I was free to pitch the story to other publications.
I was frustrated that eight months of work would not come to fruition, and I knew it would disappoint the family, who had already been so traumatized.
I remained in touch with Petronila Fernandes, talking with her about life and how she was struggling to heal and process the information I had uncovered.
In early 2024, when I applied for a reporting position at Richmondside — a new publication based in Richmond that was hyper-focused on the community — I was excited at the prospect of being able to report on my hometown and to finally tell this story. What I found was an editor and an organization that supported my efforts.
Soon after I was hired, we serendipitously discovered that Lopez wasn’t the only person to die in recent years in Richmond after being sedated by a paramedic while restrained by police. The Associated Press, in a 2024 report on instances of “lethal restraint” during arrests in the U.S., had briefly mentioned the case of Ivan Gutzalenko, a Concord man who died just a year after Lopez after being injected with the same sedative during his arrest in Richmond.
I re-started my research, filing new Public Records Act requests, and found that Gutzalenko’s family had an active lawsuit against the city, Richmond police, the ambulance company American Medical Response and the paramedic who injected him. (The district attorney had also declined to hold anyone who was present at Gutzalenko’s arrest criminally responsible. Neither paramedic was ever charged with a crime.)
That fact that there were two cases in Richmond (they are two of 16 such sedation deaths that happened over a decade statewide), along with all that I learned in my first year of reporting in Richmond about public safety, including local police watchdog groups and police alternatives, and other city issues, led to a substantial rewrite of my original article about Lopez and led me to more deeply examine issues by writing additional stories. (You can read the first one here; the others will be published throughout the week.)
I believe the Lopez and Gutzalenko cases are examples of why it’s important for Richmond to have a dedicated, free, independent source of journalism. These were two people who either lived and/or worked in this community and touched the lives of their friends, families and neighbors. Their stories deserve to be fully told.
In the case of Petronila Fernandes, a Spanish speaker unfamiliar with her rights to public information in the American legal system, she might never have learned how her brother, who she described as being as close to her as a twin, had died.
As Richmondside, which recently celebrated its first anniversary, continues to grow and become more established, we are committed to doing more in-depth journalism like this. Part of a healthy democracy is government transparency and holding officials and entities accountable to the public they serve, and in both of these cases, multiple city, county and state agencies had roles to play.
Of course nothing is black and white. These cases are nuanced and show the unfortunate realities of how our society — from law enforcement to lawmakers — often struggles to handle the moments when mental health and substance abuse intersect with public safety. I know in Richmond and Contra Costa County there has been a lot of work done, both before and since Lopez and Gutzalenko died, to try to get people in crisis the help they need before the police have to get involved.
Unfortunately, Lopez and Gutzalenko were not able to get the help they needed in time. Sadly, Lopez’s sister found out right after he died that he had been accepted into a county mental health and housing program. I hope that by telling their stories the community might be moved to do more to prevent such deaths.
Mental crisis hotlines
Contra Costa Health offers the following advice for anyone involved in a mental health crisis:
If you or a family member are experiencing a life-threatening emergency, call 911. If you are experiencing a behavioral health crisis, 24-hour care is available:
- A3 Crisis Response: 844-844-5544
- Access Line: 888-678-7277
- Contra Costa Crisis Center: 800-833-2900
- Text “HOPE” to 20121
