Police Cleared in Arrest Death of County Man at Grateful Dead Concert

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office on Friday cleared Inglewood police of any wrongdoing in the death of an Orange County man who was arrested last Dec. 10 outside a Grateful Dead concert at the Forum.

District attorney’s investigators said the officer, who had used a carotid chokehold to subdue Patrick Shanahan, 19, of Fountain Valley, did not commit criminal homicide.

An autopsy said that Shanahan died of “compression of the neck during restraint.” That report also found a high level of LSD in his blood and bruises over his entire body.

After subduing the teen-ager with the chokehold, officers tied Shanahan’s ankles with a nylon rope, handcuffed him and carried him to a police car, investigators said. There, police discovered that he had stopped breathing. He was taken to nearby Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

William Shanahan, Patrick’s father, said he is “very disappointed” and still has many questions about how his son died.

“There is a lot of conflict between the police version and the witness version of what happened,” the father said. “There’s too much disparity.”

The family has filed a wrongful-death suit against the city.

Investigators discounted reports from numerous witnesses, who said they saw officers beating Shanahan with their nightsticks. Police suggested that the witnesses may have been watching one of several other arrests that occurred simultaneously.

Police acknowledged using force against the UC Santa Barbara student, who they suspected was under the influence of drugs, but they said the forceful measures were necessary to defend themselves and to subdue the youth.

The district attorney’s report agreed, saying that officers “had a legal right and duty” to arrest Shanahan when they observed him “wildly hallucinating and apparently under the influence of a restricted drug.”

The report said “the use by a single officer of a carotid hold” to allow other officers to subdue Shanahan did not amount to a criminal homicide. When officers tried to arrest Shanahan for public intoxication, police said, the teen-ager began kicking, biting and punching the officers.

In describing the situation at the time, Inglewood Police Sgt. Harold Moret, said: “You’ve got several hundred people on hallucinogenic drugs at the same time. There are all kinds of bizarre things happening. People are running around naked. There are four or five incidents happening at one time. Officers are running from one wrestling match to another wrestling match.

“In these wild fights, the officers were using whatever force was necessary with these guys that were blasted out of their minds on hallucinogenic drugs.”