{"id":10054,"date":"2013-05-11T08:30:31","date_gmt":"2013-05-11T15:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/?p=10054"},"modified":"2013-05-11T08:44:59","modified_gmt":"2013-05-11T15:44:59","slug":"unarmed-father-of-4-pleaded-for-his-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/unarmed-father-of-4-pleaded-for-his-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Unarmed Father of 4 Pleaded for His Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unarmed Father of 4 Pleaded for His Life as Police Beat Him to\u00a0Death<\/h1>\n
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Family photo of 33-year-old David Sal Silva<\/p><\/div>\n

By Rania Khalek on May 10, 2013<\/p>\n

\"Rania<\/a>

Rania Khalek<\/p><\/div>\n

Bakersfield, CA.<\/strong> – David Sal Silva, a 33-year-old father of four small children between the ages of 2 and 10, was beaten to death by as many as nine police officers in Bakersville, California, early Wednesday morning. Police say Silva was intoxicated and fighting officers. But this was contradicted by several eyewitnesses.<\/p>\n

Grainy security camera footage\u00a0obtained<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a023ABC\u00a0<\/em>from a person who was \u201cafraid of a cover-up by deputies and wanted \u2018the truth to come out\u2019\u201d,\u00a0appears\u00a0to corroborate witness accounts, showing several men striking a man laying on the ground with objects over a dozen times.<\/p>\n

The release of a\u00a0911 call from a woman who witnessed the beating (listen\u00a0here<\/a>)\u00a0doesn\u2019t bode well for the officers\u00a0either.\u00a0The woman can be heard telling the dispatcher:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a man laying on the floor and your police officers beat the shit out of him and killed him. I have it all on video camera. I am sitting here on the corner of Flower and Palm right now and you have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight Sheriffs. The guy was laying on the floor and eight Sheriff\u2019s ran up and started beating him up with sticks. \u00a0The man is dead laying right here, right now.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Despite the hazy security footage and 911 call, police are sticking to their story. So, someone is lying. But who? Fortunately, at least two witnesses captured the beating on their cell phones. However, the devices were immediately seized by police, which is illegal in California.<\/p>\n

Cops vs. Witnesses<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kern County Sheriff\u2019s Department spokesman Ray Pruitt says that a deputy with a canine was responding to a call from Kern Medical Facility late Tuesday night about an intoxicated man outside when he spotted and approached Silva at a nearby intersection. Pruitt claims that Silva put up a fight when the deputy attempted to take him into custody, at which point more\u00a0deputies and two California Highway Patrol officers showed up to help. Silva then had trouble breathing. He was taken to Kern Medical Center and died less than an hour later.<\/p>\n

But Witnesses tell a very different story.<\/p>\n

Just minutes before Silva\u2019s encounter with police, a woman, who asked not to be identified,\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0ABC23<\/em>\u00a0that she saw Silva lying on the sidewalk seemingly unconscious.\u00a0\u201dI seen the guy laying there. I thought something was wrong with him. Then when I saw him moving\u2026 I saw his chest \u00a0moving up and down\u2026I knew that he was just drunk and eventually he\u2019ll wake up,\u201d the woman said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine that Silva was able to muster the strength to fight off several police officers just minutes after he was purportedly incapacitated.<\/p>\n

Ruben Ceballos, 19,\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0The Bakersfield Californian<\/em>\u00a0he was at his home and in bed when he awoke around midnight to screams and loud bangs, which he soon recognized as the sound of police batons smashing into Silva\u2019s skull.\u00a0\u201dWhen I got outside I saw two officers beating a man with batons and they were hitting his head so every time they would swing, I could hear the blows to his head,\u201d Ceballos said. The\u00a0beating continued for several minutes despite the desperate cries for help. Then Silva went silent and became unresponsive, Ceballos said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis body was just lying on the street and before the ambulance arrived one of the officers performed CPR on him and another one used a flashlight on his eyes but I\u2019m sure he was already dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sheriff\u2019s office told the\u00a0Californian<\/em>\u00a0that they will not comment on the case until their investigation into the matter is complete.<\/p>\n

Recording the Police is Not a Crime<\/strong><\/p>\n

Criminal law attorney John Tello is representing seven witnesses to Silva\u2019s beating. Two of them say they recorded the incident on their cell phones. Tello told the\u00a0Californian<\/em>\u00a0of the disturbing lengths police went to seize his client\u2019s device:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I arrived to the home of one of the witnesses that had video footage, she was with her family sitting down on the couch, surrounded by three deputies,\u201d Tello said.<\/p>\n

Tello said the witness was not allowed to go anywhere with her phone and was being quarantined inside her home.<\/p>\n

When Tello tried to talk to the witness in private and with the phone, one of the deputies stopped him and told him he couldn\u2019t take the phone anywhere because it was evidence to the investigation, the attorney said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was not a crime scene where the evidence was going to be destroyed,\u201d Tello said. \u201cThese were concerned citizens who were basically doing a civic duty of preserving the evidence, not destroying it as they (sheriff deputies) tried to make it seem.\u201d<\/p>\n

A search warrant wasn\u2019t presented to either of the witnesses until after Tello arrived, he said, adding that one phone was seized before the warrant was produced.<\/p>\n

Tello said the phone of the first witness was taken after the deputies told him he was either going to give up the phone the easy way or the hard way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey basically told him they were either going to keep him at this house all night until they could find a judge to sign a search warrant or he could just turn over his phone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The witness gave up his phone two hours before he had to get to work and was told by deputies that he could collect his phone the next day after they had extracted the evidence they needed, Tello said.<\/p>\n

However, the witness never got his phone back, Tello said, and was told it could take years before he does because the investigation could take a long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy main concern is that these witnesses are not harassed by deputies because this case can make others who see crimes happening not want to speak up because of the way law enforcement handles situations,\u201d Tello said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If the deputies did in fact beat a helpless man to death, they have good reason to fear the recordings.<\/p>\n

In Fullerton, California, just two and half hours away from Bakersfield, cell phone footage was\u00a0instrumental<\/a>\u00a0in holding police\u00a0accountable<\/a>\u00a0for beating Kelly Thomas, a mentally ill homeless man, to death in 2011.<\/p>\n

Though California is a\u00a0two-party consent state<\/a>\u00a0(requires all parties to consent to an audio or video recording for the the recording to be legal), the law does not apply in public settings due to an \u201cexpectation of privacy\u201d provision. More importantly,\u00a0police are not permitted\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0to confiscate a cell phone unless the phone was used in a crime.\u00a0Therefore, the seizure of cell phones by the Sheriff\u2019s deputies was illegal.<\/p>\n

Silva\u2019s Family Wants Answers<\/strong><\/p>\n

Silva\u2019s younger brother, 31-year-old Christopher, was devastated after learning the details of his brothers death from witnesses.\u00a0\u201dMy brother spent the last eight minutes of his life pleading, begging for his life,\u201d he told the\u00a0Californian<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The family has since\u00a0hired<\/a>\u00a0attorney David Cohn.<\/p>\n

At a\u00a0press conference<\/a>\u00a0Friday, Cohn praised witnesses for \u201cpolicing the police\u201d by recording the beating. He also expressed concern that the police might tamper with the footage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose videos that were taken are the most important piece to this case and another main concern is that those videos aren\u2019t altered or destroyed by the Sheriff\u2019s Department,\u201d Cohn said.\u00a0\u201dWe all know that a picture is worth a thousand words. And thank God we have concerned citizens who take video and pictures of incidents like this and who are ultimately policing the police.\u201d He addressed the Sheriff\u2019s department directly, asking, \u201cwhat are you hiding?\u201d<\/p>\n