All charges against a Texas man who was mistaken for a domestic-violence suspect while jogging were dropped.
What We Know:
- Mathias Ometu is a 33-year-old man who was going to be charged for two counts of assault on a police officer after an altercation with police last week. But court records show that the charges were dropped on Tuesday.
- “After reviewing all evidence as well as considering all the facts and circumstances, I have decided that the just outcome is the dismissal of all charges against Mr. Ometu,” Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales said in a statement.
- The incident occurred on Aug. 25th, Ometu was jogging when San Antonio police approached him and believed he matched the description of the man in their domestic-violence report. The intended suspect, the woman’s abusive ex-husband, is a Black man that was wearing a green shirt, and from the body camera footage released by San Antonio police, Ometu did match. Another description was that the suspect has a “bit of scruff” on the chin and Ometu has a noticeable beard.
- Before Ometu was detained, the officer asked for his name to see if he was the man in the report but Ometu refused to give him any information about him. The officer asked him why he was acting the way he was and Ometu responded with, “Because I’m working out and you’re bothering me.” The officer explained to him that he matched the description and they wanted to clear it up. And because he matched the description, the officer placed Ometu in handcuffs until the situation could be cleared.
- There is a part where the officer is heard asking an officer on the phone to bring the woman to their location to identify the man but the woman couldn’t because she has her kids. The woman says the beard is really short but Ometu’s beard is pretty long. That’s when the officer with the body cam says they will get him over to the woman’s house to confirm.
- The officer gets out of the vehicle and tells Ometu that they will drive him over to the house but he refuses, causing the two officers present to force him into the vehicle where the officer is heard yelling “Quit fighting”. The body camera falls off but Ometu is heard saying multiple times, “you’re choking me”. Once the video is visible, one of the officers claim Ometu kicked him in the face.
- Eventually, they get the woman to identify him and she tells officers that it’s not him but it’s not audible.
- A woman named Jenifer Rodriquez captured the moment on video and says that Ometu was not being aggressive but the officers were. “They assaulted him, choked him and tased him,” she said. “And now they’re trying to cover their butts. And what’s worse is that the police chief is backing them up. I think they could have de-escalated.”
- San Antonio Police Cheif William McManus did defend his officers and accused Ometu of escalating the situation by not giving his information. “I have determined that the officers acted appropriately, within their legal authority,” McManus said. “Unfortunately the situation could have been resolved within minutes with any degree of information sharing with the police officers.”
Ometu’s father told NBC News that his son had the right to panic the way he did because he knows he didn’t do anything wrong and was being forced into handcuffs. Ometu spoke about the experience saying he was “guilty before proven innocent”. He also described what happened as “true darkness during a period of isolation”.
