Sheriff’s Department Sued in Restraint Death

The family of a Thousand Oaks man who suffered a seizure and died after being squirted with pepper spray has sued the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, alleging his civil rights were violated.

Marco Marangoni, 29, died New Year’s Eve after deputies pepper-sprayed him and held him on the ground to handcuff him during a disturbance call. The coroner’s office ruled he died of “cardiac arrhythmia due to asphyxia during prone restraint.”

The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, accuses the department and Deputies Nolan Stoyko, Larry Bull and Carlos Macias of using unreasonable force to subdue Marangoni.

The Sheriff’s Department plans to fight the suit, said Alan Wisotsky, an attorney for the department.

Wisotsky said the deputies acted within department policy and used the minimum amount of force to subdue Marangoni, a large man who witnesses said was under the influence of marijuana and possibly LSD that night.

“We have a 300-pound, 6-foot-2 crazy man on our hands that is out of control,” Wisotsky said Monday. “He’s a threat to the officers’ safety, he’s a threat to his own safety, and they have to restrain him in order for medical personnel to even look at him.”

Marangoni had been “acting bizarre and speaking incoherently” that night when deputies arrived about 10:50 p.m., according to authorities. Soon thereafter, he apparently had a seizure, they said.

At one point, Marangoni lunged at deputies, prompting them to squirt him with pepper spray. He backed off and sat down, but when he lunged at them again, they tackled him and held him face-down long enough to handcuff him, Wisotsky said.

Once Marangoni was handcuffed, they rolled him onto his side, as required in department training, Wisotsky said. He was taken by ambulance to Columbia Los Robles Hospital, where he was pronounced dead later that night.

“Unfortunately, when you have someone who’s that obese and that excited and is under the influence of drugs and probably has a medical condition, you have the effect of his diaphragm being compressed and you have an arrhythmia,” Wisotsky said.

But plaintiffs’ attorney Carol Watson said the coroner found that the trace amount of drugs in Marangoni’s body did not contribute to his death.

“What kills people--and we’ve found recently that this has killed four to five dozen people in Los Angeles--is the compression of the respiratory apparatus in a prone position against a hard surface,” Watson said. “You cannot breathe in unless your ribs expand. They have this guy on his stomach and there are officers piling on his back.”

As for Wisotsky’s statement that deputies followed department protocol by rolling Marangoni onto his back once he was handcuffed, Watson said, “He was probably dead by that point.”

The suit accuses the deputies of violating Marangoni’s rights against unreasonable search and seizure and his right to life, and asks that the family be paid unspecified damages.

There have been other cases around the nation of suspects dying after being sprayed with the oleoresin capsicum spray issued to police. Large-framed men are particularly vulnerable, but other complicating factors can include drug overdoses or psychotic episodes, according to experts.

An Oxnard man died in May 1996 after police used pepper spray on him. Ray Lee Carter, also a large-framed man, died of a heart attack. His death was later attributed to an irregular heartbeat, an inadequate air supply and the cocaine in his system.

His family also filed a lawsuit, which is pending against the cities of Oxnard and Port Hueneme in federal court.