After a Black man was fatally shot in the back by a Portland police officer while running away during a response to an armed robbery call in November 2022, he was left to bleed out for nearly 30 minutes and later died at a hospital, according to a lawsuit filed by a representative of the man’s estate.
The lawsuit accuses the officer – who shot Immanueal Jaquez Clark, 30, with an AR-15 rifle – and the city of Portland, Oregon, of excessive force, negligence for failing to provide emergency medical care, and wrongful death in a federal lawsuit filed March 7.
Several Portland Police Bureau officers responded to a call of an attempted robbery of a person parked at a fast food restaurant shortly after midnight on Nov. 19, 2022, and were informed that the suspects were white, according to the lawsuit.
“The victim told the 911 dispatcher that [three to four] white men were involved in the robbery, and they left in a sedan heading west on Powell Boulevard,” according to the lawsuit.
“The victim was only able to describe the gunman as a white man wearing a ski mask and a black hoodie. The victim provided no further description of any of the suspects other than that they were ‘definitely’ white men,” the complaint continues.
Officers then followed a vehicle without probable cause that its occupants were involved in the robbery and approached it after the car with multiple people stopped in a church’s parking lot, according to the complaint.
The officers attempted a “high-risk felony stop” of the non-running vehicle that Clark was standing near in a parking lot, according to the lawsuit, which claims the officers “wrongly and unreasonably believed this car was involved” in the attempted robbery attempt about 20 minutes prior.
When officers approached while Clark stood near the driver’s door, he ran off and a Portland officer shot the man in the back, according to the lawsuit.
Another passenger, Damon Dubois – a Black man – also ran from police, Clark’s attorneys say.
There was also a white woman and a white man who were “in or near” the parked car, the complaint stated.
Audio recording of the shooting reveals the officer fired three shots, and the one that hit Clark “lacerated his small bowel, his mesentery, his left kidney and his liver, then exited through his abdomen,” according to the complaint.
The plaintiffs say Clark fell and called for help as he bled profusely. His cries were heard by police as well as nearby residents, who, “were it not for the police presence, would have provided first aid and gotten him an ambulance.”
After Clark was shot, “the police then left him to lay on the concrete parking lot, writhing in pain and bleeding out, for 26 minutes before providing any medical attention,” the complaint continues.
“The police prevented would-be good Samaritans from helping Clark with his life-threatening injuries,” it claims.
Attorneys claim the officer and the city violated Clark’s Fourth Amendment rights, according to the suit.
“Under the circumstances of this case, a high-risk felony stop transformed the stop into an arrest under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” according to the complaint. “The officers had no probable cause or reasonable suspicion to believe that any person in or standing around this car was involved in the attempted robbery at the Super Deluxe.”
According to a memo summarizing the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office’s investigation, officers believed the car matched a similar description to the car that was used in the robbery, and they saw it driving recklessly, according to the Associated Press.
In the memo, one officer is said to have thought Clark had a gun, but it was discovered during the investigation that he was in fact unarmed, and video from the restaurant where the robbery happened showed Clark’s car wasn’t involved in the robbery, the AP reported.
In addition to what happened to Clark, the lawsuit outlines several other cases where Portland Police Bureau officers did not render aid soon after a person was injured, including an incident in December 2010 during which officers shot a man and didn’t allow emergency medical aid to be given to him for 84 minutes.
The AP reported that both Portland police and the city’s mayor’s office said they do not comment on pending litigation.
A Multnomah County grand jury found last August that officers’ use of force against Clark was not criminal, AP reports.
