Federal prosecutors are weighing an FBI investigation of three San Antonio police officers accused of severely beating a father of three by mistake while in pursuit of another man on the Northwest Side last year.

Roger Carlos, now paralyzed as the result of subsequent surgery, reported the incident to the FBI a couple of months after the May 20, 2014, incident, the agency confirmed Tuesday.

San Antonio Police Department officials said they could not directly respond to the allegations Tuesday. “Clearly it was a case of mistaken identity,” SAPD Chief William McManus told KENS 5, which first reported on the matter last year.

Carlos said in an interview Tuesday that he pleaded with police to tell him why they were beating him after they accosted him as he took photos of a pediatric clinic his wife and sister-in-law now run in the 10600 block of Westover Hills.

The officers didn’t listen, he said. Instead, one officer nearly ran him over, another put his knee on Carlos’ neck and face and jumped up and down on him and all three kicked and punched him about 50 times, Carlos said.

They said little after other officers arrived and told them they had the wrong guy, he said. Carlos was hospitalized and treated for a large gash above his eye and a broken tooth. Because of severe swelling of his head, doctors performed a CT scan.

He returned to work in fleet maintenance at a major airline, but could not turn his neck without turning his whole body and would go home in severe pain. Physical therapy provided no relief so Carlos had spinal surgery in November, which resulted in complications that left him paralyzed from the chest down. He is now receiving therapy at a specialized spinal medical facility in Houston.

“The last thing I want to do is take someone from their family, but that’s essentially what those (expletives) did to me,” Carlos said of his reasons for pursuing the case, apologizing for his profanity.

His wife, Myrna Carlos, a pediatric nurse practitioner, cried as she remembered how her able-bodied husband liked to play sports with their three children, snowboard and hike. He needs help now just to scratch his nose.

“It’s just unbelievable,” Roger Carlos said. “I could understand taking somebody down hard. I can understand the need for officer safety, but secure them, handcuff them. That’s not what happened. I got on the ground, I was not a threat to anyone. I complied with their orders. They just wanted to beat me up.”

Carlos said he went to the feds because the SAPD dragged its feet — two months after he filed a complaint, the investigating internal affairs officer told him he had not gotten to it. Friends in other law enforcement agencies urged him to get “it out of that (internal affairs) office.”

He reported the matter to the FBI in late summer or fall 2014, and the agency has since completed its investigation and passed it to federal prosecutors, Carlos said.

“We’re looking at it,” Richard Durbin, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, said Tuesday. “We have not made a prosecutive decision.”

Special Agent Michelle Lee, a spokeswoman for the FBI in San Antonio, also confirmed the investigation.

“Upon learning about this matter, the FBI began collecting evidence and conducting witness interviews,” the FBI said in a statement. “As this is a pending matter, we are not able to comment further at this time.”

All three officers were originally given 15-day suspensions in late 2014. McManus then followed the recommendation of a review board that examined the case and officers' history and recommended five-day suspensions.

Two of the officers were identified as Carlos Chavez and Virgilio Gonzalez. The third officer was not identified. All three used accrued leave time instead of serving their suspensions, a police spokesman said.

Speaking generally and not about a particular case being handled by his prosecutors, Durbin said alleged police brutality or wrongful shootings must be analyzed to ensure they meet the high evidence threshold of federal civil rights law.

“It’s not enough to show officers made a mistake,” Durbin said. “You have to show that they willfully and intentionally agreed to violate someone’s civil rights.”

The officers were members of a multiagency regional task force known as the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, and members of an SAPD SWAT team who had been pursuing a suspect wanted on a felony warrant, according to an SAPD incident report.

The true suspect, Josue Rodriguez Gonzalez, 27, fled from police from Loop 410 along the Texas 151 access road before he exited at Westover Hills and ditched his car in the parking lot of Rudy’s BBQ, the report said. The restaurant is a few hundred feet from where Carlos was standing.

The couple said they believe SAPD is fostering a culture of brutality and cover-up.

“It completely shatters your confidence in them. Do you trust them?” Myrna Carlos asked. “You lose confidence in the authority they have. You’re afraid to stop because of what they might do to you.”

“They allow things like this to go on, so it goes on,” Roger Carlos added.

gcontreras@express-news.net