Police officers who last July handcuffed and helped restrain a man who died hours later will not face criminal charges, the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office determined.
City prosecutors who reviewed the case wrote in a declination report that handcuffing the man, Trea Ellinger, 29, was necessary and safe, and was proportionately less force than what officers faced from the man. It described Ellinger as attempting to kick police and “severely agitated and violent.”
“While receiving medical care, the involved citizen suffered cardiac arrest and later died,” the prosecutors wrote. “There is no evidence of causation between anything that the officers and medics did and the fact that the involved citizen later died.”
Police first responded July 25 to a block on South Howard Street downtown for a 911 caller’s report that a man was lying in the middle of the street, “fighting people” and trying to kill himself. Two Baltimore Police officers arrived to find a man showing “signs of intoxication and distress,” surrounded by Maryland Transit Administration police officers and Baltimore Fire employees, according to the prosecutors’ declination report.
Police ultimately handcuffed the man, who prosecutors said was “speaking incomprehensibly,” and helped secure him on his side on a stretcher.
By the time Ellinger entered the ambulance, he was in a “prone,” or facedown, position, officials said previously. That type of restraint can lead to breathing difficulties and cardiac arrest, and body camera footage released weeks after the man’s July 25 death showed a paramedic warning officers against positioning him facedown.
Prosecutors’ review, however, suggested Ellinger was positioned that way because of his actions, rather than steps taken by police. Prosecutors wrote that, based on officers’ body camera footage, the man was “attempting to flail” and “burying his face into the sheet of the stretcher.”
“Paramedics attempted to get vital signs from the involved citizen but were unable due to him moving around, incomprehensibly yelling, and trying to break free,” the report said. “The involved citizen was still in the prone position with his head turning left, right, and face down on the sheet of the stretcher.”
At one point, a paramedic attempted to pull the sheet to free the man’s face, to “negative results,” the report said. He was rolled onto his side shortly afterward and first responders saw that his lips were blue. A paramedic told an officer, “I need him on his back,” and the officer then joined in unstrapping the stretcher restraints and removing the man’s handcuffs to roll him onto his back.
Paramedics continued to take medical steps until they arrived at the hospital, according to prosecutors’ narrative in the declination report. He was later pronounced dead.
The city State’s Attorney’s Office wrote in its review that it identified “no criminal wrongdoing” by police.
The state’s Independent Investigations Division, which investigates civilian fatalities involving police, has not released its final report on Ellinger’s July death.
The division, part of the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, has prosecutorial powers for incidents that occurred after Oct. 1, but those powers do not apply for Ellinger’s death in July. Instead, state investigators prepared a report with findings and legal analysis, for consideration by local prosecutors.
An online dashboard shows that state investigators gave the city prosecutor’s office their final report in October. Prosecutors’ declination report said the “findings of the AG’s Office were reviewed and considered for purposes of this report.”
City prosecutors wrote in their report that there were no “material differences” between what that Attorney General team found and what prosecutors within the city’s Police Integrity Unit of the State’s Attorney’s Office found, working with the Baltimore Police’s Special Investigative Response Team, known as SIRT.
State investigators with the Independent Investigations Division are authorized to investigate law enforcement officers’ actions, not those of the emergency medical personnel, the team said. Five Maryland Transit Administration Police officers were involved in responding to the incident, along with two Baltimore Police officers.
