Eugene weekly., July 22, 2021, Page 11, Image 11

his hands cuffed behind him. A deputy shackled his legs.
Renaud, in reviewing the video, says the deputies at
this point took proper steps: They had plenty of people to
handle Payne, and one deputy held Payne’s head to make
sure Payne didn’t smack it on the ground. “Protecting his
head, good,” Renaud says.
However, Renaud said the combination of placing
Payne face down while he was panicked created a risk.
“OK, now he’s going to start to not be able to breathe,”
Renaud said as he reviewed the video, “because his heart
is going so hard.”
An EPD report later noted that at least one sheriff ’s
deputy can be seen on video placing his knees on Payne’s
back. That’s a method of restraint that can disrupt or
stop the person’s breathing.
The video shows one deputy placing his left knee on
Payne’s upper right back — the deputy then extended his
right leg behind him to exert more leverage and pressure.
Six seconds later, Payne stopped howling. He let out
rapid grunts with every breath. Payne tried to lift his head.
A deputy pushed his head back down on the concrete.
“Hey,” the deputy told him. “Calm down.”
“I can’t breathe,” Payne replied.
It’s not clear how many of the deputies grouped around
him heard him say, “I can’t breathe.” But the video shows
the deputy with his knee pressed into Payne’s upper right
back immediately eased off.
Right after Payne said “I can’t breathe,” a deputy asked
Payne, “Did you take any drugs or anything?”
Another told him, “Just take deep breaths.”
Fifteen seconds after Payne said “I can’t breathe,”
another deputy asked, “Landon. Landon. What drugs
did you do today?”
Payne grunted with every breath. His body jerked a
few times, but with less force than before.
“We gotta get you through this process, man,” a deputy
told him “You gotta relax.”
One deputy noticed that another still had a knee
pressed down on Payne’s back.
“Could you get your knee down to his arm like this?
That way you could get off of his back.” The other deputy
replied, “I got my knee on his arm.”
A deputy kept shouting questions at Payne about what
drugs he had taken. Another tried to calm him.
“Relax, man,” he said. “Let’s get through this.”
“He’s not,” another deputy replied.
Then Payne stopped moving. A few of the deputies later
said they assumed Payne had finally agreed to cooperate.
But one deputy noticed something was wrong.
“Did he just pass out?” he asked. “Is he breathing?”
Two minutes had elapsed since deputies put Payne
face down on the concrete. The deputies turned him on
his right side and then his back. They couldn’t find a pulse.
His face and lips turned blue.
Deputies started CPR, trading off for the next nine
minutes until an ambulance arrived and EMTs pumped
Payne’s chest for another nine minutes.
Sheriff ’s Sgt. Jester tried one more time to convince
EPD Officer Solorio to change his mind about booking
Payne into jail. As Jester wrote in a report, “I asked EPD
if they would [cite in lieu of custody] now due to the fact
that Payne was going to the hospital and they would not
have to deal with him again tonight.”
The EMTs finally picked up a slight pulse and took
Payne to RiverBend, arriving at 11:45 pm.
In all, 56 minutes had elapsed since EPD officers had
driven Landon Payne away from his house.
Angie Payne had heard nothing about Landon since
then. At 12:15 am, she received a call from an EPD officer
who told her Landon had collapsed while being booked
into the Lane County Jail. Landon had been given CPR
and was now in the ICU unit at Riverbend.
The last part was true. It was true, Landon had suffered
cardiac arrest, received CPR and was in the hospital.
But the key part of that account — that Landon had
simply collapsed — was a lie.
Because he’d never been booked into jail, Payne was
officially still in the custody of EPD Officer Jairo Solorio,
who followed the EMTs to RiverBend. “Due to his condi-
tion, I was unable to lodge Landon at the jail,” Solorio later
wrote in his report. “Landon was treated for any injury
or medical condition and was in stable condition after I
served his citations.”
But Solorio’s report was wrong: Payne wasn’t stable —
he was progressing to brain death, records show.
At the hospital, Solorio did what he refused to do
before: He released Payne from custody. In doing so,
Solorio wrote a ticket for resisting arrest and delivered
it to Payne, who was now unconscious and dying.
TUCKED AWAY
“My trust is broken,” Monica Payne says after EW
shared details about what happened to Landon on March
27, 2020. “I hate that my family member had to go through
that when there’s some expectation of safety and care.
And that’s not what it sounds like actually happened.”
“It's scary that that happened, and nobody would have
ever known,” she says.
Angie Payne also wonders why no one ever gave
her the full story. She hopes her husband’s death
gives rise to changes in the system to prevent other
people from enduring what her husband experienced.
“They should’ve sent him to the hospital where he needed
to be,” she says. “They needed to analyze the mental and
physical state he was in. They were so withdrawn from
what was really happening to him at that moment,” she
says. “I don’t think he was even able to reason or talk or
answer anything. He just needed help, and I think it’s
tragic that they denied him that.” ■
This story was developed as part of the Catalyst Journalism
Project at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and
Communication. Catalyst brings together investigative reporting
and solutions journalism to spark action and response to Oregon’s
most perplexing issues. To learn more visit Journalism.UOregon.
edu/Catalyst or follow the project on Twitter @UO_catalyst.
WHAT DOES ‘UNDETERMINED’ MEAN?
Medical experts weigh in on the manner of Landon Payne’s death BY ARDESHIR TABRIZIAN
Lane County Medical Examiner Daniel Davis
performed an autopsy on Landon Payne on April
3, 2020. When he wrote his report, Davis ruled the
cause of Payne’s death was a lack of oxygen to his
brain due to cardiac arrest “during restraint by
law enforcement.”
He then had to determine the manner of death,
a finding that describes the events that brought
about the cause of death. The standard choices
are natural causes, accident, suicide, homicide or
undetermined.
Payne’s death was clearly not a suicide or “natural”
death. Davis had concluded police restraint had
contributed to the cause of death. So the ruling for
manner of death narrowed to accident, homicide
or undetermined.
Davis chose “undetermined.” His ruling was
important: A finding of “homicide” would have
triggered an independent criminal investigation
into Payne’s death.
EW provided three independent medical experts
Davis’ report. Dr. Priya Banerjee, a board-certified
forensic pathologist in Rhode Island, tells EW
it’s not clear how Davis arrived at his finding of
“undetermined.”
Banerjee says a medical examiner should strongly
consider homicide as the manner of death in a case
when the person dies while being restrained by police.
“If the police restraint is thought to have caused
E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M
his death, then that would qualify as death at the
hands of others,” Banerjee says.
Homicide as a manner of death, according to
the National Association of Medical Examiners,
“occurs when death results from a volitional act
committed by another person to cause fear, harm,
or death.” Intent to cause death is not required for
a homicide ruling, nor does it mean the homicide
was a criminal act.
Dr. Alfredo Walker, a forensic pathologist in
Ottawa, Canada, says he believes Davis made what
he considered the “safest” ruling.
Walker examined the video of sheriff deputies
restraining Payne. He said that making a finding on
manner of death would be difficult “no matter which
side someone falls on. Any group of pathologists
would be evenly distributed across those options.”
The national guidelines call on the medical
examiner to consider what would have happened
if the person had not been restrained by police.
“Would he have died right at that point in time
had he not been restrained? Most likely not,” Walker
said. “But what percentage contribution to his death
was played by the restraint, that’s anybody’s call.”
Alon Steinberg, a cardiologist in Ventura, California,
says he believes the deputies’ use of restraints “100
percent” contributed to Payne’s death.
Steinberg describes it as a “death from prone
restraint in an agitated subject” — specifically from
what he defined as “prone restraint cardiac arrest.”
“They were very careful on the examiner report
almost never to use the word ‘prone,’ or that
he was placed on his stomach, or anything like
that,” Steinberg says. “I never know whether law
enforcement officers are aware of the dangers of
prone restraint or not. I think most often they just
forget their training.”
Steinberg says some police textbooks point to
medical evidence that restraining some people on
their stomach can be safe. But police training often
points to the risks.
Steinberg says in the cases he has reviewed
involving prone restraint deaths, the death was
usually not intentional by the law enforcement
officers, “but they should know better.”
“This happens all the time, all over the country,”
Steinberg adds. “The cops are putting these people
in a prone position. And I’m not saying everyone
dies, but there’s a small percentage of people who
are vulnerable and at risk of dying. They die, and
police blame other causes. We’re going to continue
seeing cases like this, unfortunately.”
Steinberg says a medical examiner should ask if
it was just random that Payne had cardiac arrest
while being restrained.
“And the answer is, of course, it’s not. I would like
to see that one. Prone restraint again was involved
and contributed to death.” ■
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