Jose
and Alicia Elizondo, the parents of a Garland teen who
died on March 19 from gunshot wounds suffered after a Garland police officer
responded to a 911 call for a suicide attempt, have filed a civil
rights and wrongful death suit in Dallas County District Court. The
15-page lawsuit against the City of Garland Police Department and
Officer W.M. Green seeks an unspecified financial compensation for the
death of 17-year-old Ruddy Elizondo.
According to the suit, the teen had been treated for a week in
January at a Timberlawn Mental Health System
facility following a suicide attempt. Says the complaint, a physician there
"concluded that Ruddy's mental illness posed only a danger to himself
and not to others."
But according to the narrative provided in the
lawsuit, close to midnight on March 18, the family
called 911 after Alicia Elizondo found her son in his bedroom crying
and holding a kitchen knife by his side. Minutes later, Officer Green of the Garland Police Department arrived and entered the home
alone with his gun drawn. The sister, Claudia, says she witnessed an emotional
exchange between her brother and the officer.
"Then suddenly, Green
fired once and hit the boy," alleges the lawsuit. Ruddy fell to
the floor, and, the complaint alleges, the officer fired "again and again."
Neither a spokesman from
Garland Police Department nor Garland City Attorney Brad Neighbor would
comment. "It's our general policy not to discuss pending litigation," Neighbor tells Unfair Park.
"This
absolutely was avoidable," says Geoff Henley, the family's lawyer. The
immediate cause of death listed on the death certificate is "gunshot
wounds of the trunk." Henley believes the officer fired a total of
three shots. Since most suicide attempts are a cry for help, Henley
said, the officer should not have entered with a firearm. "You don't
counsel somebody with a .357 Magnum," he says.
Henley says that the police reports he obtained
from family members, who had to file open record requests to attain thems, have been heavily redacted. Reading from one such report,
Henley recounts: "Green turned in the bedroom and observed a large Hispanic
male holding a knife against his rib cage, and then, redacted,
redacted, redacted, just a big black paragraph."
"We fully intend to go after them," said Henley. "Any way you cut it, this was an avoidable instance."
The
exact sum sought by the family is still to be determined. "It's
obviously going to be a very large sum based on a variety of factors."
