The family of Daryl Vance, a Black man who beat cancer twice yet died two months before his 71st birthday after a Detroit police officer punched him in the head, is suing the city, the former officer and a sergeant for $50 million.
The lawsuit filed on Feb. 29 claims former officer Juwan Brown and Sgt. Jarmiare McEntire violated Vance’s civil rights on Sept. 1, 2023, when Brown punched him in the left temple during a confrontation outside the Garden Bowl bowling alley and restaurant in midtown Detroit.
The deadly use of force was so intense that Vance’s head slammed into the pavement, “causing irreparable and fatal brain damage,” according to the lawsuit.
After being on life support for 20 days, Vance died in the hospital on Sept. 21 after doctors determined he’d never regain consciousness or breathe on his own. The severe blow to his head and the loss of oxygen after he went unconscious had caused a “complete suppression of brain waves,” the lawsuit stated.
Brown, 29, was fired from the Detroit Police Department and faced a manslaughter charge in connection with Vance’s death, but a district court judge dismissed the case in January after deciding prosecutors didn’t provide enough probable cause to send the case to trial, The Detroit News reported.
The lawsuit says the former officer violated Vance’s due process rights under the 14th Amendment after failing to render medical aid during the first 20 minutes the man was unconscious and not breathing.
Leading up to the incident, Vance had taken an Uber around 3 p.m. from his Highland Park apartment to the bowling alley, where he sat at the bar over the next few hours, according to the complaint.
Eyewitnesses said Vance was “friendly” and “soft-spoken” but appeared “sad,” and Vance later told a bartender he was “having a bad day” and feeling down about a friend in hospice care, the lawsuit said.
Things began escalating around 6:30 p.m. that day…
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