ANTIOCH — Police have released new details about a 34-year-old man who died last year while struggling with officers.

Rakeem Rucks was handcuffed when he began resisting officers, leading to a struggle on the ground that ended when he suffered a fatal heart attack, according to court documents filed by Antioch police Thursday. The incident took place on June 25, 2015, outside of the Delta Pines apartment complex.

Ironically, it was Rucks who called Antioch police to the scene that day, while suffering from a psychiatric episode and claiming he was being followed by armed assailants, according to court documents.

In February, a coroner’s inquest jury ruled that Rucks’ cause of death was “accidental,” citing medical reports that say he died of a heart attack brought about by methamphetamine in his system, the hot sun, and the struggle with Antioch police. But in July, Rucks’ mother, Debra Moore, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Antioch police, claiming officers assaulted Rucks and ignored his calls for help as he lay on the ground dying.

In its response, filed in federal court Thursday, the Antioch police department pushed back against those allegations and offered its own narrative of the day’s events.

“Rucks’ death was not caused by these APD officers,” the city’s response says.

When officers arrived at the Delta Pines complex that day, residents there identified Rucks as the man who had kicked down the door to someone’s home earlier in the day. When officers located Rucks, he initially obeyed their commands, and they handcuffed him without incident, according to the Antioch police department’s response.

But when they approached an Antioch patrol car, Rucks began to pull away from the officer “and was now being noncompliant and uncooperative, not to mention endangering officers.” An officer responded by sweep kicking Rucks’ legs out from under him. Rucks fell to the ground but continued “violently kicking, fighting, and squirming,” leading officers to put him in a figure four leg lock, the city’s response says.

Then, officers called for a WRAP restraint device, which is used by law enforcement to shackle suspects’ legs and upper-body. As that device was being applied, officers noticed that Rucks’ “resistance lessened and it appeared (he) was losing energy from the struggle,” the city’s response says.

An officer attempted CPR, but Rucks died later that day. The city’s response says that no weapons were used on Rucks, no internal injuries were found, and that officers were “simply holding him down to control him and calm him down.”

Rucks was found with more than 30 cuts and Bruises during autopsy, which Antioch police Lt. Anthony Morefield said earlier this year was a natural result of the ground struggle between Rucks and the officers.

By contrast, the wrongful death suit — filed through the law office of John Burris — alleges that police were directly responsible for Rucks’ death, saying officers ignored his “obvious signs” of distress and continued to push his face into the dirt even after Rucks began breathing heavily and stopped making noises.

It references the death of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old who died after an NYPD officer performed a controversial chokehold move on him, saying Rucks screamed for help and yelled “I can’t breathe,” but that officers told him he was “fine.”

The suit also alleges that an Antioch police detective who witnessed the incident gave vague answers during a coroner’s inquest hearing, and that the hearing’s presiding officer asked incomplete questions until being provided with a new list of questions by a civil attorney. The city’s response does not address these allegations, but Antioch police have denied them saying the detective gave full, honest answers during the hearing.