Isaac Walton rose out of bed on Aug. 15 at the Ocean Inn Motel on Seawall Boulevard feeling relaxed. It had been more than eight months since he received a harrowing diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia but Walton’s relentless positivity kept his spirits high. It was the day before his middle daughter’s sixth birthday — an occasion more than worthy of a family trip to Galveston — and he was determined to start the day off right.

Yet, the peaceful summer morning ended with the 32-year-old bloodied and bruised, dropped off at the emergency room by the same Galveston police officers he says assaulted him without cause.

The incident left Walton, who is already weak from chemotherapy and near-daily blood and platelet transfusions for his cancer treatment, with blurred vision in his left eye, headaches and frequent nightmares. Walton’s attorneys, Joe Mathew and Brandon Cammack, plan to file a federal lawsuit against the city of Galveston and four city police officers in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, alleging that the officers abused their power by committing aggravated assault against Walton and violating his constitutional rights.

“On Aug. 15, Isaac Walton was brutally assaulted by four police officers from the Galveston Police Department,” Mathew said. “They stomped him, choked him, kicked him and tased him twice. What was the reason? We don’t know. He was not committing a crime. He was not violating any law. He has never been in trouble before. I think Isaac Walton, his family, his kids, the people in general, we all deserve an answer as to what happened, and why?”

Reeling and bloody

Walton had a short to-do list when he got up that morning at the Ocean Inn: fix a flat tire from the drive from League City the previous evening, and get some breakfast for his wife, Janet, and three children.

He walked out of the motel and down Seawall Boulevard. Taken with the pristine view of the Gulf of Mexico, Walton said he walked down to the beach and out onto a jetty just west of Galveston’s famous Pleasure Pier. Walton said he was standing on the jetty when he felt someone grab his right arm. He turned around to see a Galveston police officer.

Walton, who has a “PICC line” -- peripherally inserted central catheter -- in his left arm that connects directly to his heart for chemotherapy, said he immediately warned the officer to be careful with his left arm. If the picc line is pulled out of his arm or damaged, Walton could bleed to death.

“When the first officer grabbed my arm, I immediately (said), ‘Hey sir, I have a PICC line, I have leukemia on the other side,’” Walton said.

After the second officer slammed Walton on the ground, pinning his right arm behind his back, two other Galveston police officers, one of whom is a sergeant, joined the fray. With three officers holding Walton on the ground, a fourth officer, later identified as Sgt. Angela Rojas, tased him twice in the back.

“The only thing I could think about was how am I going to make it out of my situation alive or at least get back to my family,” Walton said.

Walton was reeling — a contusion on his left eye, and bleeding from his left temple, with abrasions on his neck, arms and back. Walton said at no point did the officers say why they were arresting him or why they approached him on the jetty in the first place.

Police tell another story

A probable cause affidavit provided by the Galveston County district attorney’s office provides a drastically different account of the incident.

The affidavit states that Officer Brian Ansley, a field training officer, and David Roark, a probationary police officer, responded to a welfare concern on the 3000 block of Seawall Boulevard regarding a “Hispanic male who appeared to have been beat up and could hardly walk,” and that the subject — Walton — got into the water fully clothed.

Ansley and Roark observed Walton staggering on the far end of the jetty and that he ignored verbal commands to "stop,” showing signs of wanting to jump into the water, the affidavit states.

According to the affidavit, Walton did not comply, turned around and faced the officers as they walked toward him, and removed his shirt. Roark then grabbed Walton's right wrist while Ansley grabbed his left wrist to try and gain control of Walton. When Ansley grabbed Walton's left wrist, he pulled away causing Ansley to fall on the rocks.

As Ansley and Roark tried to gain control of Walton, “Sgt. Rojas drive stunned Mr. Walton in his upper back with her Taser to try and get him to comply with our commands,” the affidavit states. Walton was then handcuffed and placed in a police car.

The affidavit concludes: “Due to Mr. Walton's preexisting conditions and illness, he was not accepted at Galveston County Jail and was transported by (Ansley) and Ofc. Roark to (John Sealey Emergency Room) for medical care.”

Indeed, Walton was never booked or charged with a crime while at the station. Rather, the officer who slammed him on the ground approached him to apologize for the incident and offered to drive him to the emergency room, Walton said.

Walton, who said at that point he was “dazed and confused,” accepted the offer. He said two of the officers dropped him off at John Sealey Hospital at the University of Texas Medical Branch and told the triage nurse that they found him in the condition he was in.

With no idea where her husband was taken, Martinez called the police station, but they had no record of him being booked. Panicked, she called her sister and mother to come meet her in Galveston to look after her children.

Her sister picked her up to take her to the hospital to look for Walton when they found him at 3 p.m., sitting down slumped against the side of the Ocean Inn Motel. Walton had declined treatment at the hospital, asking only for alcohol wipes to clean himself up. He then walked over 2 miles back to the motel.

Martinez and her sister took Walton to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston later that night, where Martinez submitted a police report to a University of Texas at Houston police officer. That report notes that when she went outside the motel to see what the police activity, she spoke with Sgt. Angela Rojas, one of the officers that detained Walton, who told her they “received a call about an individual that was stumbling and appeared to be beaten up.”

The Galveston Police Department filed a probable cause affidavit on Aug. 15 charging Walton with resisting arrest. The warrant was not signed by a magistrate judge until Aug. 20. As of Sunday, the warrant for Walton was still not publicly available.

A spokesman for the League City Police Department confirmed that Walton was arrested and booked for the resisting arrest charge in League City on Sept. 6, more than three weeks after his encounter with Galveston police. He was driving with his wife and daughter to pick up his son from football practice when he was pulled over and arrested.

On Aug. 17, a UT-Houston police investigator referred the police report to Sgt. Andre Mitchell, who works in the Galveston Police Department’s Office of Professional Standards. Walton’s attorneys, Joe Mathew and Brandon Cammack, also contacted Mitchell requesting an investigation.

Doug Balli, the assistant police chief for the Galveston Police Department, said in a phone interview that an internal investigation exonerated the four officers — Ansley, Roark, Rojas, and Officer V. M. Cadena.

“The internal investigation showed that there was no wrongdoing on the officers’ part and any use of force they utilized was justified to make the arrest,” Balli said. He added, “there was some mention that (Walton) had admitted he was in an altercation prior to the police interacting with him.”

Walton’s attorneys deny that, as well as the account presented in the affidavit.

“There is no way Isaac is going to jump in the water, the second he gets that PICC line wet, he’s dying, he cannot get it infected,” Mathew said.

Hos attorneys say it is highly unusual for a resisting arrest charge to be filed weeks after an incident.

“They knew the complaint was coming so they try to cover their butts and end up filing a warrant for his arrest for resisting arrest,” Cammack said of the Galveston police. “What the officers have done is they committed an aggravated assault, and they did it with their badge under the color of law,” Cammack said. “If that were any other person off the street, they’d be facing a grand jury down in Galveston County district attorney’s office for official oppression, aggravated assault, you name it.”

On Sept. 21, Mathew and Cammack wrote a letter to Vernon Hale, the Galveston police chief, requesting recordings, body and dashboard camera footage, forensic evidence from any weapons used or discharged during the Aug. 15 incident, as well as any photographs taken of the officers in question after the incident. They also plan to file a complaint with the Galveston County district attorney’s public integrity division.

“We are going to find out everything,” Mathew said.

They have yet to receive a response from the police department, and because the resisting arrest charge has still not been posted publicly, Walton does not yet have a court date.

Effect on kids 'very sad'

Walton hopes that his leukemia diagnosis allows him to hold on long enough to see some measure of justice. Walton had to cease chemotherapy treatments shortly after the incident, his body no longer responding positively to the radiation.

Left with few options, Walton is scheduled to receive a stem cell procedure in hope that it will generate new cells to fight the disease. In the meantime, he receives blood and platelet transfusions every other day at MD Anderson Cancer Center to keep the disease from ravaging his body.

“If I don’t get this (stem cell) procedure, I will die,” Walton said.

Nearly two months later, there are still visible scars from the Aug. 15 incident on his wrists and abrasions on his back. Two separate taser marks dot his upper and lower back. But Walton says the most lasting damage is that it has shaken his children’s faith in the institutions designed to protect them.

Walton said his 13-year old son has been lashing out, punching walls in anger. His 3-year old daughter shuts down when he tries to talk to her about what happened, curling up on his chest in silence. His 6-year old daughter — whose birthday they were celebrating that day in Galveston — “thinks all cops are bad now,” the byproduct of witnessing her father return home on Aug. 15 looking like a battered shell of his former, sunny self.

Walton thinks about how close he was to dying that day in Galveston. He wonders whether he was stopped by police because of the color of his skin. But for the sake of his family’s happiness, he puts on the best face he can to soldier on.

“I want them to only notice positivity,” he said. “No negativity, none. Only positivity. The rest of that I’ll keep inside.”

“I have to tell (my 13-year old son) that you cannot put yourself into a situation (with police) because even if you are not doing anything wrong, you could not come home one day,” Walton said. “And that’s sad. It’s very sad.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled PICC line as "PICC line."

nick.powell@chron.com