This is an opinion column.

Christopher “Shane” McKinney may not have known exactly what he wanted when he went to the Etowah County Sheriff’s office in Gadsden on January 24, 2018. “I need some help,” he told officers, according to a lawsuit filed against the Sheriff’s department last December in Northern District Court. “I just need some help.”

He believed people were trying to hurt him, the suit says. Maybe even kill him.

He certainly did not come to the sheriff’s office to die.

Yet he did--after a physical encounter in which he was tased, handcuffed and wrestled to the ground by Etowah County Sheriff deputies and officers, hitting his head on the ground at least once, the lawsuit contends.

Sheriff’s department employees “illegally detained him, rifled his pockets, attempted to handcuff him, subdued him by force, and ultimately killed him by deploying tasers into sensitive areas of his upper body,” according to the lawsuit, filed in December.

McKinney, who is African American, “died on the concrete outside Etowah County Sheriff’s Department as its employee laughed and complained about having to use unwarranted force upon a person who had committed no crime, had no weapon,” the suit says. (According to reports, McKinney was taken to a Gadsden hospital, where he was declared dead.)

McKinney was 39 and a father of three, according to his obituary.

In January, the Etowah sheriff’s department filed a motion to dismiss a portion, but not all of the complaint, which was filed by James McKinney, Christopher’s brother, on behalf of the estate. The motion, in part, states the sheriff’s department “is not a legal entity subject to suit."

Christopher McKinney possessed “a mental illness that affected one or more major life activities, including, but not limited to, thinking, working and communicating with others,” the suit alleges.

On that fateful day, Jamie Capes, an Etowah County Sheriff’s employee, allegedly noticed McKinney pacing the parking lot as she walked to her car. She then saw him walk up and down the entrance stairs, the lawsuit states.

She returned inside and told Deputy Anthony Davis and Sgt. William Langdale what she saw, and both went outside to investigate, the complaint says.

Davis and Langdale asked McKinney to come inside the office, which he did, then asked his name.

“I just need some help,” McKinney declared. “People have been hurting me.”

McKinney declined to give his name and said, “That’s OK,” according to the complaint.

“Then McKinney attempted to leave the Sheriff’s Office, sliding his body out of the door as Langdale was blocking the entryway,” according to the complaint. (The defendants, in a January filing, deny this.)

Langdale asked McKinney if he had identification. When McKinney said he did, Langdale “grabbed McKinney’s arm in one hand and grabbed McKinney’s wallet out of his back pocket,” then “twisted McKinney’s arm in an attempt to handcuff him,” the lawsuit says. (Defendants deny these descriptions of the encounter.)

“I didn’t do anything,” McKinney said. “Please help me.”

What happened in the next few moments was chaotic—and deadly.

Langsdale pulled away and tased McKinney, who, according to the suit, “attempted to pull the Taser leads out of his [upper torso].”

“Langsdale and Davis both converged on McKinney trying to wrestle him to the ground,” the suit says.

Davis “deployed” his Taser “at close rage into McKinney’s torso” and “again directly into McKinney’s abdomen,” according to the suit. (Defendants admit a Taser was used on McKinney.)

Other officers are alleged to have joined the melee, including Corrections Officers Brandon Hare and Logan Page, says the suit. “Deputies called out on the radio for additional help.”

Hare allegedly tased McKinney, who falls “face down on the ground”, after which Page tased McKinney again. “Davis then double handcuffed the now prone and inert McKinney” and “left [him] face down on the concrete while a crowd of Sheriff’s Department employees gathered.” (Defendants admit “two pair (sic) of handcuffs were linked together to handcuff McKinney.)

One officer is alleged to have declared “he had ‘wasted $100.00 worth of [Taser] cartridges on [McKinney].” Another claimed his sunglasses were broken in the scuffle. (Defendants admit both things occurred.)

“After a long delay, the Sheriff’s deputies decided to roll the now silent McKinney onto his back, allowing his head to hit the concrete with an audible thud,” the complaint reads.

Officers “discussed the incident, accused McKinney of being high on drugs…,” according to the suit.

“For the first several minutes, no Sheriff’s Department employee rendered any aid, other than to walk near McKinney’s body and declare that he was still breathing.”

Until he died. On the concrete. With no outstanding arrest warrants, no weapon, and no, it was later discerned, according to the complaint, illegal drugs in his system.

Christopher Shane McKinney almost certainly did not come to the Etowah County Sheriff’s office that day to die face down on the concrete.

James McKinney alleges Langdale, Davis, Hare and Page “subjected [Christopher] McKinney to physical abuse” and “did so without a warrant,” “violating McKinney’s Fourth Amendment right … to be free from arrest without probable cause and/or to be free from unreasonable seizure”.

McKinney, the suit says “was harmless,” that “he had a mental illness…”

“[Officers] knew or should have known that McKinney is a person with a disability because it was obvious and they were alerted to that fact by their co-worker,” the suit says. “[And] failed to reasonably accommodate that disability…”

“McKinney died at the hands of these officers as a result of their failure to reasonably accommodate his disability.”

The suit also alleges the department “has not implemented any relevant policies or trained its employees on the application of the [Americans with] Disabilities Act or the Rehabilitation Act to the interactions with citizens who seek help ...”

The estate, according to the suit, requests unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, plus “reasonable” attorneys’ fees, injunctive relief and “such other relief as this Court deems just and proper.”

The defendants denied 25 of the allegations outlined in the complaint, including that officers “left McKinney face down on the concrete while a crowd of Sheriff’s Department employees gathered.”

On Friday afternoon, February 7, the case is set for a telephone conference before Judge Corey L. Maze.

In his obituary, it says McKinney graduated from Gadsden High School, worked for UPS for 15 years and was a member of Mount Calvary Baptist Church.

Among the items to be considered during the 2020 state legislative session, which began Tuesday, is providing the state’s too-long-neglected Department of Mental Health with $18 million to build three crisis centers.

A center that could have perhaps provided Christopher McKinney with a place to go—someplace where he might have been able to get the help he asked for.

Someplace where he may not have been tased, wrestled to the floor, double handcuffed, and died.

A voice for what’s right and wrong in Birmingham, Alabama (and beyond), Roy’s column appears in The Birmingham News and AL.com, as well as in the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register. Reach him at rjohnson@al.com and follow him at twitter.com/roysj