Fil-Am Attorney General Rob Bonta to probe Navy vet’s death in police custody

Videoclip image of Antioch police officers detaining Angelo Quinto who died in the process. JOHN BURRIS LAW OFFICE

California Attorney General Rob Bonta will be looking into the death of 30-year-old Filipino American Navy veteran Angelo Quinto, who died in police custody inside his family’s home in 2020.

The review of the public report on Quito’s death comes after the Quinto family’s lawyer, John Burris, and his office sent an email addressed to Bonta’s office on Wednesday earlier this week. The email was sent after Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton said that they would not file charges against the responding officers on the day of Quinto’s death.

Becton said that the decision not to charge the officers came as a result of the autopsy report, which detailed that there was no damage to Quinto’s larynx or trachea. However, two independent medical examiners hired by Burris’ team ruled Angelo Quinto’s death as restraint aphyxia.

A coroner’s inquest jury ruled that Quinto’s death was caused by “excited delirium due to drug intoxication, psychiatric conditions, physical exertion and cardiac arrest.”

“The manner in which the Antioch officers engaged with Quinto was both lawful and objectively reasonable under the circumstances,” District Attorney Becton said in her report.

Ben Nisenbaum, Burris’ legal partner, told KTVU that the charging decision was “outrageous.”

“They’re looking at the trachea. But George Floyd‘s trachea was never broken,” Nisenbaum said. “The biggest strawman is that you need to see damage to the throat or neck to have an asphyxiation case. But that’s just now [sic] how it works. Any competent investigator knows this.”

Neither Attorney General Bonta nor District Attorney Becton has released further comments on the matter.