A man seen on police body-cam footage acting erratically and swinging a knife died after officers in Miami shot him twice with stun guns in a move officials say was meant to save him from harming himself.
Luis Alberto Luna, 38, died at a Miami hospital early Sunday about an hour after the encounter with police officers at a street corner bus stop about three miles from where he lived with his father.
“Our intention was to get this gentleman help, to get him to rescue [units] where he could get treated at a mental or a medical facility. It was not to cause him any additional harm,” Deputy Chief Ronald Papier of the Miami Police Department told reporters on Tuesday.
But Luna’s father, Alberto Luna, told ABC News on Wednesday, “I think they overdid it. I don’t think it was necessary.”
Alberto Luna said his son had a long history of mental health problems and was diagnosed with schizophrenia by doctors as a teenager.
“Sometimes he used to get in a crisis and he used to feel panic,” Alberto Luna said. “Sometimes he felt people were chasing him and he would start acting strange, like trying to defend himself. He used to look out the window and say, ‘They coming! They coming! They coming!'”
Police released a series of videos taken by body cameras worn by officers who responded to the scene.
In the footage, an officer came upon Luis Luna standing in the middle of a street about 4:45 a.m. Sunday. He appeared to be intentionally stepping in front of cars, making drivers swerve to avoid hitting him.
An officer is heard yelling at him repeatedly to get out of the street.
“You’re gonna get hit by a car. Come here,” the officer says to Luna in the video.
Suspecting Luna was on drugs, the officer asked: “Did you take something?”
Luna then stumbles over to a bus shelter and sits down. He pulls something out of his pocket, which police said was a knife, and started swinging it around as if defending himself from imaginary people.
In another video, Luna is seen lying on the ground next to the bus-stop bench. He appeared to be making stabbing motions to his stomach as officers standing nearby tell him repeatedly to put down the knife, orders Luna refused to heed.
As soon as paramedics arrived, officers deployed their stun guns, according to the video.
“He was shocked one time with the electronic control device. He was still combative and then he was shocked a second time with an electronic control device,” Papier said. “At that time he stopped and the officers were able to take him into custody and bring him over to rescue.”
The body-cam video shows several officers swoop in, placing Luna face-first on the pavement and attempting to secure his hands behind his back with flex ties. He suddenly goes limp and appears nonresponsive. Paramedics approach and begin to treat Luna, who died about an hour later at North Shore Medical Center.
“This clearly is a tragedy,” Papier said.
He said seven officers and a sergeant involved in the incident have been placed on administrative assignment, pending the result of an investigation being conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Albert Luna said he has viewed the videos and recognizes that his son was suffering from a mental crisis when police deployed their stun guns.
“He was not attacking anybody. But when he was in a crisis, that was typical of him,” Albert Luna told ABC News. “He was just lost. He was spaced out. He was in his own world at that moment.”
He said his son was having one of his mental episodes on Friday but he was able to calm him down. He said Luis Luna had been prescribed several antipsychotic drugs, including Haloperidol.
The father said that on Saturday his son appeared to be normal again, and even cooked himself a steak for dinner. Later that afternoon, Albert Luna said his son asked him for a ride to the bus stop.
“That was the last time I saw my son alive,” he said, adding that police came to his house in the Miami suburb of Cutler Bay about 11:30 a.m. Sunday and informed him that his son was dead.
He said he believes his son would have calmed down had police waited before deploying their stun guns.
“He was living in two different worlds, one fantasy, and one reality,” the father said. “And sometimes he used to go out of reality and when he used to go out of reality he was not calling me daddy. He was calling me Albert, which is my name. And I used to asked him why. And he’d say it was because ‘my real father is dead.’ And I’d say OK. So I used to just let it go.”
He continued, “But then when he came back to reality, he would tell me, ‘You are the greatest. You are the best father on earth. And he was hugging me all the time. He would call and text me, ‘Dad are you OK? I’m thinking about you.’ He was a really sweet kid.”
