By David Minsky

LAFAYETTE La. (Reuters) - For six months, Catherine Cortez believed that her 30-year-old son, who died in March after a scuffle with police in Louisiana, had succumbed to brain damage from chronic cocaine use.

Earlier this month, she was horrified to learn from an 11-page state forensic pathologist's report that Robert Minjarez Jr.'s death was instead a police-caused homicide by suffocation, Cortez said on Wednesday.

"I read to the part where he begged for his life and I just lost it," Cortez said. "It was like he died twice."

The death of Minjarez, who according to the Louisiana Forensic Center's August report repeatedly said "I can't breathe" and pleaded for help while handcuffed and pinned down for about four minutes by three or four police officers, has sparked Louisiana State Police and FBI investigations.

Minjarez's pleading mirrors that of Eric Garner, an African-American man who died in July after police in Staten Island, New York, placed him in a chokehold. Garner's death attracted wide attention.

Cortez declined to say whether her family has retained a lawyer to pursue a possible civil case over her son's death.

Before interacting with police, Minjarez, who was white, had been behaving erratically outside a gas station in Lafayette, 120 miles west of New Orleans, according to the report.

He did not appear to be armed, it said, and he appeared to struggle briefly when police took him to the ground.

After losing consciousness, he was taken to a hospital and died five days later, the report said.

Minjarez had cocaine in his system when he died, the report found, and a day before the incident had checked himself out of a hospital against medical advice while suffering from "rhabdomyolysis," or muscle breakdown, consistent with drug use.

The cocaine and muscle breakdown contributed to his death, the report said, but "the death was caused by the actions of others during a violent struggle."

Police from three agencies were on the scene, according to KATC-TV, but it is not clear the officers in physical contact with Minjarez were from which of the agencies.

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Cortez was aware of the scuffle but was not told by doctors or law enforcement that it may have factored into his death, she said. She instead surmised that his death owed to cocaine use, she said.

The Minjarez incident occurred on the evening of March 2. The same night another contentious police-involved death happened about 20 miles away.

Victor White III was shot dead while handcuffed in the back of a police car in New Iberia in what the local coroner ruled a suicide but family members say was a police killing.

Like the Minjarez case, White's death is under investigation by federal and state authorities.

Cortez hopes her son's death will help prevent similar incidents in the future.

"I feel that if this saves lives, then I've done justice for my son," Cortez said. "It won't bring Bobby back, but they have to use this as a tool."

(Editing by Jonathan Kaminsky and Mohammad Zargham)