New Review: Tyrone West Didn't Die Because Of Heart Condition

BALTIMORE (AP) -- A man who died after a struggle with Baltimore police officers in 2013 died because he couldn't breathe, and not because of a heart condition as the department's independent review board concluded, according to a new forensic review of his autopsy.

The man's family hopes it will prompt the city's top prosecutor to reopen his case.

Tyrone West, 44, died after being arrested during a traffic stop on July 18, 2013. West was pulled over for backing down the street into an intersection, according to the report. After officers asked West to get out of the car and sit on the curb, they noticed a bulge in his sock they suspected was drugs. A bag recovered at the scene turned out to contain cocaine. The officers said they chased West and he was ultimately tackled to the ground. When West died he was in handcuffs.

An autopsy revealed no serious injuries or signs of asphyxia, and the officers were not charged in West's death. The department's Independent Review Board said in a report published in August 2014 that West "died of Cardiac Arrhythmia due to Cardiac Conduction System Abnormality complicated by Dehydration during Police Restraint." According to the Medical Examiner, another contributing factor may have been "the extreme environmental temperatures, which were reported in the high 90s, with a heat index in the low 100s (degrees Fahrenheit)."

But the West family, particularly West's sister Tawanda Jones, has held weekly demonstrations calling for a renewed investigation into his death. As part of a multi-million dollar federal lawsuit against officers from the city and Morgan State University, her attorney, Dwight Pettit, hired Dr. William Manion to conduct an independent forensic investigation. Manion is the chief of pathology at Memorial Hospital of Salem County in New Jersey, and is a designated forensic pathologist and medical examiner in that state. His report, submitted to the court in November, concludes that West suffocated, and contradicts the assertion that West died of a heart condition.

"I do not believe that the cardiac conduction system abnormality made any significant contribution to Mr. West's death," Manion wrote. "There is no evidence of cardiac disease, fainting or sickness due to any cardiac conduction system abnormality prior to his death."

Manion wrote in a two-page preliminary report that, "The main cause of death is the fact that he was restrained in such a way that he was unable to breathe." Manion called it positional asphyxia.

Although the report was filed in November, Jones said she was made aware of it just last week, shortly after State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby declined to reopen the case. Mosby said in a written statement that she couldn't reopen the case because "there has been no new evidence or additional information."

But Jones hopes the report will sway the city's top prosecutor to reconsider.

"When I spoke to our state's attorney she said even though she couldn't do anything now, she said if anything new develops she'll be more than happy to sit down with my family, and that gave me hope," Jones said. "This is definitely new information, and something needs to be done."

Jones also hopes that Mosby will sign off on a request to exhume West's body and conduct an independent autopsy.

Rochelle Ritchie, a spokeswoman for the state's attorney's office, said Friday declined to comment past Mosby's previous statement on the case.

T.J. Smith, a spokesman for the police department, also said he could not comment on pending litigation.

At a recent demonstration, West's aunt, Diane Butler, said, West "didn't have a heart condition. I'd know; I raised him."

Earlier this month Abdul Salaam, a man who said he was beaten by the same officers involved in West's death just weeks earlier, won a lawsuit against the police department for $70,000.

A call to an attorney listed as representing those officers in the civil case did not immediately return a call for comment.