Sonoma County District Attorney clears Rohnert Park police officers in Taser death

No criminal charges will be filed against the Rohnert Park public safety officers involved in the death of a Forestville man who had a heart attack after being shocked with an electric stun gun and restrained by police last year, Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch said.

Branch Wroth, 41, died May 12, 2017, during an encounter with police in a room at the Budget Inn on Redwood Drive in Rohnert Park. Motel staff called police, describing Wroth as a “very disoriented person” who didn’t vacate the room by check-out time, officials said.

Wroth stopped breathing and lost consciousness as he was being held on the ground with his hands and feet restrained behind his back by multiple officers, according to the report and body camera footage.

Wroth, who was under the influence of methamphetamine, had tried to stop police from putting him in handcuffs. Prosecutors found the four officers and one sergeant acted lawfully while detaining Wroth and none of their actions “created a substantial risk of death or great bodily injury,” according to the 30-page document reporting their findings released this month.

Ravitch said Wroth’s death was likely caused by his drug intoxication combined with physical exertion resisting police, a conclusion strongly contested by Wroth’s family.

“It’s an unfortunate outcome, but we found no criminal liability,” Ravitch said in an interview last week.

Wroth’s family is suing the city and officers in an ongoing federal civil rights case filed last year in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The family claims the officers recklessly disregarded Wroth’s rights during the encounter when police were called to check his welfare.

Their attorney, Izaak Schwaiger, called Ravitch’s report “a whitewash.” He said officers shouldn’t have used such force - multiple shocks with a stun gun, strikes with fists and a flashlight, forcing him facedown on the ground and pulling his arms and legs back in a “hogtie” - because there was no need to arrest Wroth, who was incoherent and in medical distress.

Wroth had a misdemeanor warrant because he had unexcused absences from a court-ordered drunken-driving class, an issue that could have been handled with a citation, Schwaiger said.

“There’s no way a reasonable person could view the force being used as reasonable,” Schwaiger said. “You can watch him die before those officers’ eyes. You can hear him saying he can’t breathe and then he dies.”

Dr. Arnold Josselson, a pathologist hired by Sonoma County to conduct an autopsy, classified Wroth’s death as a homicide. The finding doesn’t imply criminal liability, but it means Wroth died at the hands of another, sheriff’s officials said.

Josselson determined the cause of death was “cardiopulmonary arrest (heart attack) immediately after a struggle with law enforcement, while under the influence of methamphetamine,” according to the district attorney’s report.

The primary police personnel involved in attempting to detain Wroth were officers David Wattson, Sean Huot, his brother, Matt Huot, Mike Werle and Sgt. Eric Matzen. They all remain active employees with the city’s public safety department, said Don Schwartz, the assistant city manager.

The encounter with Wroth began calmly and remained so for several minutes. Wattson, the first officer to arrive at the room, tried to persuade Wroth to put on his clothes and allow the officer to handcuff him while examining the details of the warrant, according to the district attorney’s report and footage from police body cameras shown to a Press Democrat reporter by Schwaiger, the Wroth family attorney.

Wattson asked a second officer on scene to stay outside the room. Wroth was initially calm, though he was breathing heavily and appeared confused, unable to quickly answer simple questions like where he lived. Sitting on the edge of the hotel bed, naked, Wroth told the officers he believed he was poisoned by the detergent in his clothing and didn’t want to put his clothes on.

“These are drenched with chemicals,” he said in the body cam video.

An officer asked Wroth to stand up so he could be handcuffed. Wroth seemed confused, asking the officer what kind of insurance he had.

Several minutes into the encounter, Wattson and Sean Huot gripped Wroth’s arms and tried to stand him up. Wroth responded by lunging toward a nearby window in the small hotel room, pushing out the screen and attempting to crawl outside, according to the district attorney’s report.

The officers struggled to pull Wroth back into the room, punching and elbowing Wroth several times in the back. Wattson then shocked Wroth with a Taser, which helped to bring him back into the room, the report said.