A federal jury on Thursday, Oct. 22, awarded $51.8 million to the mother of a man who San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies shot and killed while chasing him in the open desert northwest of Palm Springs in 2023.
The civil lawsuit alleged that Yucca Valley resident Antonio Garza Jr., 44, had mental health issues that deputies failed to recognize, and they fired at him 21 times, hitting him with 12 shots, attorneys with Hadsell Stormer Renick & Dai said at a news conference in Pasadena on Friday, Oct. 23.
The attorneys said they believe the judgment against San Bernardino County — handed down after jurors deliberated for parts of two days in U.S. District Court in Riverside — was the largest ever for a police shooting in California.
Court records identified the deputies as Bill Abernathy and Nicholas Kridner. Both are still with the department and have been promoted to detective, the attorneys said.
Jurors found Kridner 38% liable, Abernathy 30% liable, the county 17% liable and Garza 15% liable, according to the verdict form posted in court records.
The largest amount, $10 million, went to Garza’s mother, Matilde Garza, for loss of love and companionship. She is also slated to receive $8 million for emotional pain and suffering. Jurors awarded $8 million to Antonio Garza’s estate for loss of enjoyment of life.
“We recognize this as a jury saying, enough is enough, attorney Rebecca Brown said. “This senseless violence is unacceptable. This was an execution of a mentally ill man.”
Garza had made suicidal statements to deputies, she said.
“An important point here is that the jury also applied value to punitive damages (which totaled $10 million),” attorney David Washington said. “They saw what these two officers did as heinous, which it was. And they saw it as incumbent upon themselves to punish these officers and to deter people from engaging in this kind of conduct in the future, to stop the police from doing this again.”
This publication reached out to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department on Friday seeking comment. The status of any criminal investigation by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, which has jurisdiction because of the location of the shooting, was unclear Friday.
During the trial, deputies said that they shot Garza as he was running toward them, which the attorneys said was contradicted by a private autopsy and by a bystander video.
“We had the testimony… of an independent coroner who conducted an autopsy and showed, through the trajectory of the bullets, that Tony was shot in the back and he was shot while curled up in the fetal position on the ground. These officers got on the stand at trial, lied in the face of this grieving mother,” Washington said.
“This doesn’t bring back my son, but finally, the truth is out about who my son was andwhat the deputies did to him,” Matilde Garza said in a news release.
Garza’s family on Friday called for state Attorney General Rob Bonta to bring criminal charges against Abernathy and Kridner.
It was unclear Friday whether Garza was armed. The state Attorney General, which investigates fatal shootings by police of unarmed civilians, does not list this case on its website.
“Our hope is that yesterday’s verdict will bring the often overlooked issues of mental health illness to the forefront, Garza’s eldest sister, Victoria Velasquez, said at Friday’s news conference. She sat beside Matilde Garza as she spoke, and both became emotional.
“As a society, we must stop ignoring and disposing of people who are struggling,” Velasquez said. “There’s also an urgent need for concrete policy changes to ensure that others are not subjected to the nightmare our family has endured for almost four years.”
The Sheriff’s Department said in a news release issued after the shooting on Feb. 5, 2023, that deputies were investigating a truck fire northeast of Yucca Valley when they saw a man who they believed had started it.
When they tried to talk to the man, later identified as Garza, he fled in a car. The pursuit went south on Highway 62 to the Whitewater Cutoff north of the 10 Freeway, where Garza tried to drive off the freeway. But his car became disabled, the Sheriff’s Department said. Garza ran, and deputies shot and killed him.
The attorneys said Friday that deputies chased Garza, who “was exhibiting symptoms of a mental health crisis,” and shot him 12 times, including in the back and while he lay on the ground in a fetal position.
“The deputies ignored training and protocols regarding de-escalation and interactions with people with mental disabilities,” attorney Brian Olney said.