Three California police officers have been charged in the death of a man in their custody in 2021, prosecutors announced Thursday – two years after the district attorney’s office said it would not bring criminal charges against the officers.
Eric McKinley, James Fisher and Cameron Leahy were each charged with one count of involuntary manslaughter in the April 19, 2021, death of Mario Gonzalez Arenales, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced Thursday.
The case is one of several previously cleared investigations involving police shootings and in-custody deaths that were reopened by a new Public Accountability Unit announced by Price in January 2023, shortly after she took office.
An investigation by the district attorney’s office under different leadership did not charge the officers, citing the initial autopsy determining the leading cause of death was “the toxic effects of methamphetamine,” prosecutors said in a 2022 report.
A second autopsy “attributed Mr. Gonzalez’s death to ‘a result of Restraint Asphyxiation,’” the district attorney’s office said in a statement Thursday.