Man died in Maricopa County jail after law enforcement used excessive force, family alleges

A mentally ill man was killed in a Maricopa County jail by officers who used unreasonable force to restrain him and left him to die, according to a lawsuit filed by his family on Friday.

Akeem Terrell, a 31-year-old man from Detroit, lived in Phoenix for six years before he was arrested after refusing to leave a party on New Year's Day in 2021.

His family contends that newly released body camera footage shows what happened next amounted to a violation of his rights and resulted in his death.

After his arrest, Terrell was taken by Phoenix police to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Intake, Transfer and Release jail, located on Lower Buckeye Road in Phoenix.

Upon arrival, body camera video footage and audio show Terrell was confused and potentially in the midst of a psychotic break. He claimed he had been taken to a fake jail and that officers were lying about where he was. Terrell repeatedly said he believed officers were trying to kill him.

The video shows officers picking Terrell up by his arms and legs and taking him into the jail for processing while he continues to ask what he’s done wrong.

The officers take Terrell into an isolation room at the jail where they attempt to change his handcuffs from Phoenix police-issued cuffs to those used by the county jail.

Terrell was 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighed more than 400 pounds. Because of his size, the lawsuit said officers used two sets of handcuffs linked together that "forced Akeem’s hands behind his back in a strange, painful, and unnatural way."

Several officers put their weight on Terrell, who was lying in a prone position with his arms behind his back. Terrell told the officers they were killing him as they folded his legs up and pressed them down onto his body.

The video shows Terrell's head and face were smashed up against a wall as he grunted and struggled with the officers on top of him.

At one time, as many as seven officers were on top of Terrell and holding him down.

Once the officers changed the cuffs, the video showed them filing out of the isolation cell, leaving Terrell motionless and facedown on the floor.

The video showed several minutes go by before anyone came by to look at Terrell through an observation window in the cell door. Finally, after about six minutes, officers returned to the cell, removed Terrell’s restraints, rolled him onto his back and began performing CPR.

The Phoenix Fire Department arrived and continued CPR, before finally putting Terrell on a stretcher and loading him onto an ambulance.

Terrell's death similar to other cases

Attorney Jesse Showalter, representing Terrell’s family, said the videos are the most grotesque he’s ever seen after many years of working on cases involving deaths in police custody.

“The officers in the jail appear to be completely untrained on dealing with mentally ill people and the dangers of positional asphyxia,” Showalter said.

He said Terrell’s death is similar to other cases in the Valley where the victim died by asphyxiation during a police encounter, including Muhammad Abdul Muhaymin, a homeless black man with schizophrenia who was killed by Phoenix police who were holding him down in the prone position during an arrest. The 2020 Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd occurred under similar circumstances.

On average, someone dies during an arrest or in jail every 21 days in Arizona, according to an Arizona Republic investigation. The Republic found at least 64 cases in which a person died in a county jail or during an arrest between Jan. 1, 2017, and Aug. 4, 2020.

“When you restrain someone with handcuffs, and they are face down, it interferes with their body’s ability to breathe,” Showalter said. “Officers should be trained that if you leave people prone and in handcuffs they are at risk for asphyxiation.”

Showalter said the response was delayed and insufficient.

“The murder happened when they left him face down, helpless, with his hands behind his back in the cell,” Showwalter said. “If they had gotten him medical attention at that point, he could have lived.”

The lawsuit names Sheriff Paul Penzone, Maricopa County, the City of Phoenix and police and detention officers who work for both the city and county.

“The Officer Defendants caused Akeem’s death through their use of excessive and unnecessary force and their deliberate indifference to Akeem’s obvious and serious medical needs, their failure to provide or summon medical care, and their unnecessary and unreasonable delay in summoning medical care,” the lawsuit states. “At all relevant times, Akeem was either an 'arrestee; protected by the Fourth Amendment, or a 'pretrial detainee' protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Maricopa County, and the city of Phoenix declined to comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court for Arizona, seeks general and punitive damages of an unspecified amount.

‘My world was rocked’

Diamond Warren, the mother of Terrell’s daughter, said she hopes the officers will be trained to prevent a tragedy like this from happening to another family. She said Terrell was the kind of person who made everyone laugh, and his loss has been devastating.

“It was like my world was rocked,” she said. “You know how your ears ring after you hear an explosion? Mine haven’t stopped ringing yet.”

Warren is a 911 operator who lives in Detroit, Michigan. She says she knows from experience that emergency responders benefit from training on how to interact with people having a mental health crisis.

“Things can escalate pretty quickly, and that’s why we’re trained to ask certain questions so we can send a certain unit that knows how to handle someone in that situation,” she said. In Terrell’s case, she said the video shows the officers heightened the danger with an unreasonable response.

“Let’s not be so quick to take everyone to jail when they’re having a mental health episode,” Warren said. “It shouldn’t have been this way.”

Have a news tip on Arizona jails? Reach the reporter at jjenkins@arizonarepublic.com or at 812-243-5582. Follow him on Twitter @JimmyJenkins.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Akeem Terrell died in Arizona jail after excessive force used, family alleges