Mom Says LAPD|Beat Her Son to Death

LOS ANGELES (CN) - Los Angeles police used "kill punches" to beat a mentally ill man to death and then pretended to arrest him to cover up the killing, his mother claims in court.

Shelia Jackson-Murray claims LAPD officers beat to death her schizophrenic son, Damon Jackson, 37, for no apparent reason on the morning of Aug. 3, 2014.

She says police officers took her son off a bus at about 9:30 a.m. at Olympic and Pico, determined he was unarmed, then "proceeded to beat Damon Jackson mercilessly and without provocation."

As he lay on the ground, "gasping for oxygen," in obvious need of medical attention, police "continued to sadistically beat Damon Jackson mercilessly, as he lay in his own pool of blood, causing further unnecessary injuries" that killed him, his mother says in her federal lawsuit.

The LAPD did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. According to a news report on the incident, police were called by a "concerned citizen" on the bus.

Jackson-Murray says the officers had no training in dealing with mentally disabled people and beat her son to death even as "he was pleading with the officers not to beat him," and "posed no threat of imminent harm to anyone."

Their "strategic, precise, force-driven kill punches" caused asphyxiation in what she calls a police ambush without provocation, though her son was not breaking any laws.

After the beating, the officers handcuffed him, tied a rope around his waist, hog-tied his wrists to his ankles as he was "clinging to life" and put him in the back of a squad car, Jackson-Murray says. Then they "confiscated cell phone videos and other videos from bystander videographers" who'd recorded the killing, and lied about it to police investigators, the mother says.

She seeks funeral and burial expenses, costs of suit and punitive damages for wrongful death, assault and battery, false arrest, unreasonable search and seizure, negligence, denial of medical care and civil rights violations.

She is represented by Eric Morris, who was not immediately available for comment Tuesday.

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