A newly-obtained autopsy report has concluded that a 43-year old Florida man’s death after being violently restrained by jailers was a homicide by strangulation. On 17 January, 2021, Kevin Desir became unresponsive after a struggle with six deputies at the North Broward Bureau facility, a jail operated by the Broward county sheriff’s office (BSO) in south Florida. The jail specifically detains arrestees who have mental and physical disabilities, as well as those with mental health problems.
During the incident, Desir was handcuffed, punched repeatedly, tasered, and pepper sprayed by officers, and lost consciousness after the deputies attempted to strap him into a restraint chair. One deputy interlocked hands on Desir’s neck from behind and used “his body weight to leverage Desir back into the chair”, according to a memo from the Broward county state attorney’s office. Desir died in the hospital on 27 January 2021, with an official autopsy conducted by the Broward county medical examiner’s office on 28 January 2021 finding that Desir’s cause and manner of death were undetermined.
However a private autopsy was also conducted around the same time and its conclusion was very different, the Guardian can now exclusively reveal. In February this year, before the private autopsy report was complete, the state attorney’s office announced it was declining to prosecute any of the six officers involved, announcing that Desir’s death was justifiable. Desir’s family has been campaigning since for a measure of justice for their late loved one. They are fighting in court to have jail surveillance video of Kevin’s forcible restraint, while he appeared to be suffering a mental health episode, released to the public. Kevin’s mother, 73-year-old Sercilia Desir, told the Guardian last week: “They [need] to release the tapes, so I can see how they killed my son.”
The report from the private autopsy requested by the family has been obtained by the Guardian as part of a broader investigation. The report found that Desir died from “manual strangulation” and concluded that his death was a homicide after “neck and carotid arteries [were] compressed” during “law enforcement restraint attempt”.
Article URL : https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/05/kevin-desir-death-jail-autopsy-homicide