By Dan Linehan
The Free Press
MANKATO, Minn. — At 4:45 a.m. on the first day of 2013, Mankato police walked inside the entry area of the downtown Hy-Vee store and found 26-year-old Army veteran Andrew Layton asleep or unconscious.
Forty minutes later, paramedics would be trying desperately to restart his heart. Four days later, the machines keeping him alive were turned off and he died shortly after.
What happened during those crucial 40 minutes is in dispute, but the Layton family’s federal lawsuit alleges police kept him restrained in a way that impaired his breathing. They’re suing the ambulance company, too, for taking him to jail instead of the hospital.
The suit, filed Dec. 29 in Minneapolis, seeks unspecified compensation for the loss of Layton’s life and $10 million in punitive damages. It names as defendants the five officers involved in the encounter, the city of Mankato, the ambulance service and the two paramedics who responded.
The city has been assigned a defense attorney by its insurer, the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust, but he had no comment on the suit. The ambulance service, Gold Cross, released a statement Tuesday expressing their condolences to Layton’s family but denying responsibility for his death.
Relying in part on video taken that morning, the suit’s complaint alleges police were indifferent to Layton’s medical needs from the beginning of the encounter. And it accuses the officers and paramedics of a series of missteps that would culminate in Layton being brain dead shortly after arriving at the jail.
According to the civil suit, surveillance video shows Layton entering the Hy-Vee entrance area at 3:45 a.m. and pacing around, at one point walking outside to the parking lot before returning inside. At 4:38 a.m., a taxi driver encountered Layton and called 911, saying he was “passed out.”
At 4:45 a.m., officer Dan Best poked Layton and told him to wake up. Layton then slowly rose and started walking away, leading Best to say, “Hey, knock it off,” then “Don’t pull away.” Best then took Layton to the floor and, with the help of the store manager, forced Layton on his stomach.
Over the next two minutes, four other officers arrived to help hold Layton down. Officer Audrey Burgess (now Audrey Kranz) used a Taser on Layton twice. About five minutes later, he was restrained by a device called a police hobble strap, essentially a rope used to tie a suspect’s wrists to their feet.
A few minutes later, officer Best allegedly said, “We got him hog-tied.” Best also allegedly said Layton was being kept in restraints to get “the energy out of him first, then we’re taking him to jail.”
But the lawsuit alleges leaving Layton restrained on his stomach was causing pressure on his chest, keeping him from breathing in enough oxygen. As a result, it says, his heart wasn’t receiving enough oxygen and would eventually go into “asystolic arrest,” typically called a flatline. When the heart doesn’t pump blood, the brain soon becomes damaged.
Layton still had a heartbeat when paramedics pulled into the Hy-Vee parking lot at 5:05 a.m. They had been called in response to what they believed was an overdose or poison ingestion, according to the suit.
The officers asked the paramedics to help them tie Layton down on an ambulance cot, still on his stomach, and they “readily complied,” the suit said. What happened next is in some dispute.
According to one of the officers, Craig Frericks, the paramedics said the hospital couldn’t evaluate Layton in the state he was in. Layton’s agitation led officers to believe he was suffering from a mental illness as well as the effects of alcohol and drug intoxication, particularly methamphetamine.
An autopsy would later show Layton had a blood-alcohol concentration of .14, but it found no evidence of methamphetamine use.
The paramedics deny saying this, according to the suit, instead saying it was police who insisted Layton was going to jail. In any case, the paramedics agreed to take Layton to jail, still while strapped down on his stomach.
The Layton family’s attorney, James Behrenbrinker, said in a phone interview the paramedics observed Layton’s rapid, shallow breathing and believed he was overdosing on drugs or experiencing a psychotic break.
He said hospitals “are certainly equipped to deal with patients such as Layton. To suggest that they’re not is simply ridiculous.”
By the time Layton arrived at the jail, at 5:21 a.m., he was not doing well. Three minutes later, video shows, the paramedics started to remove his restraints and perform chest compressions and CPR. They kept that up for about 20 minutes, departing for the hospital with what the lawsuit described as “Layton’s body” at 5:48 a.m.
“We would contend that he was brain dead,” Behrenbrinker said.
None of the Mankato officers was disciplined for the events that morning. Besides officers Best, Burgess and Frericks, officers Matthew Huettl, Kenneth Baker and Kyley Groby are also named in the suit. The paramedics were Michael Burt and Thomas Drews.
All the officers except Groby are still employed by Mankato. Her last day of work here was May 27, 2013.
Behrenbrinker has requested a jury trial, though it isn’t expected to start for months, perhaps a year, he said. The next step in the case is for the defendants to file a response to the suit. The suit was filed in federal court because defendants in these cases tend to have them moved there eventually, he said.
Layton was a combat medic in the U.S. Army Reserves and had been honorably discharged in March 2012.
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