Transient Died at Hands of Police, Pathologist Says : Forensics: The district attorney sought a second medical opinion in a case against two LAPD officers.

A transient arrested for throwing bottles in MacArthur Park died at the hands of police, according to a forensic pathologist consulted by the Los Angeles district attorney’s office.

“My opinion is that but for what happened during his arrest, he would not have died at that time,” said the pathologist, Dr. Irving Root of the San Bernardino County coroner’s office. “He had a pre-existing subdural hematoma (bleeding beneath the skull) which re-bled during this series of episodes.”

Witnesses, who included two paramedics and a firefighter, said the man appeared normal before the altercation with police. They said two officers beat and kicked him, shoved him against a wall, allowed him to fall face down on the pavement after handcuffing him and stuffed him head first into a shopping cart.

They did not call for medical aid until after taking him to the Rampart Division police station, where they noticed that he was no longer breathing. The same paramedics who had witnessed the incident were summoned to try to resuscitate him.

County pathologists initially concluded that the death was accidental. But the district attorney’s office took the unusual step of asking for a second medical opinion, with the concurrence of the Police Department.

Root’s findings, however, were not included in papers filed in Los Angeles Municipal Court last week, when two officers were charged with use of excessive force in the death of Raymond Diaz Triana on Jan. 1, 1989.

Instead, prosecutors filed only the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s report, which listed the cause of death as “acute subdural hematoma,” but noted that microscopic examination indicated that the injury was not fresh. The county report ruled that death was “accidental,” resulting from an earlier “probable fall.”

Microscopic specimens taken from Triana’s head were examined by Dr. Hideo H. Itabashi, a neuropathologist in the L.A. County coroner’s office, who confirmed the initial findings submitted by Deputy Medical Examiner Solomon L. Riley Jr. Riley also discussed the case with two other doctors, according to medical records.

The officers, Stephen Geon and Jose Salazar, face both Police Department disciplinary action and up to three years in prison and/or a fine of $10,000 if convicted of using excessive force. If they had been charged with involuntary manslaughter, they could have received a maximum sentence of four years.

The district attorney’s decision to file the lesser charge has raised questions about whether weight was given to the fact that the victim was a transient.

“In cases of police brutality we’ve been involved with, it’s been very, very hard to get any disciplinary action taken against the officers involved,” said Nancy Mintie of the Inner City Law Center. “When problems arise, they (the homeless and transients) do not seem to be dealt with in a manner that is fair-handed.”

However, she added, “I wouldn’t want to make a blanket condemnation, because some police are very good at working with the homeless.”

Roger Gunson, head of the district attorney’s special investigations division, has refused to discuss his reasons for not filing stronger charges against the officers. But district attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said that in light of the conflicting medical opinions, a manslaughter charge would not meet the test of “probable cause” required to survive a preliminary hearing, nor would the evidence support a manslaughter conviction.

“We went with what we felt was the strongest case we had,” Gibbons said. The one-year statute of limitations on the excessive-force charge was also running out, so prosecutors had to file charges before getting a third medical opinion, she noted.

Geon and Salazar are scheduled for arraignment Jan. 19.

They surrendered earlier this week and were released on their own recognizance.