Pinellas deputy cleared in death of Guatemalan man stopped over false report

LARGO — A deputy should not have even been in the Capri Mobile Home Park the night he stuck Baudilio Morales Velásquez with an electroshock device, the Pinellas County sheriff announced Thursday, but it was not his fault the man died.

The call that originally brought authorities to the scene was based on a fake report from a drunk 25-year-old, investigators found. Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said Baudillo Mendez Vasquez concocted a report that someone on a bike attacked him Aug. 18 about 10 p.m. The description he gave matched a man deputies saw nearby, Morales Velásquez, 31, who ran when they stopped him for questioning.

A deputy caught up to Morales Velásquez and stunned him with a Taser, causing him to fall off an 18-inch step and smack his head on the ground. A medical examiner found he died from blunt force trauma sustained in the fall. The deputy, Sgt. Noble Katzer, will not face discipline after investigators from the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney’s Office cleared him this week.

“The circumstances lined up just horrifically,” Gualtieri said.

RELATED: An undocumented man died after an encounter with Pinellas deputies. What went wrong?

Both Morales Velásquez and Mendez Vasquez were immigrants from Guatemala, according to authorities. They did not know each other. Deputies arrested Mendez Vasquez on Thursday morning; he faces a felony charge of misusing the 911 system.

Local advocates have said the case shows the harm caused when law enforcement fails to build trust in immigrant communities. Both Morales Velásquez and Mendez Vasquez were living in the United States illegally.

Morales Velásquez was riding home from work at a Chinese restaurant, to a place he shared in the Capri Mobile Home Park on U.S. 19 near Clearwater with his 14-year-old son.

Mendez Vasquez was drinking at his home in the nearby Southern Comfort mobile home park. At some point, investigators said, he cut his hand on a bottle and bled outside. His brother was angry, saying the blood would draw attention, and Mendez Vasquez, upset, said he would call the police. He told a dispatcher he had been assaulted by a man who fled on a bicycle.

On the way to the scene, deputies heard a description of the suspect over the radio, Gualtieri said: Hispanic male, medium build, about 35 years old. They drove by Morales Velásquez, who the sheriff said fit the description.

Katzer, the sergeant, stopped to speak to Morales Velásquez, who provided an image on his phone of a Guatemalan identification card.

Deputy Edward Feidt went to Southern Comfort to speak with Mendez Vasquez. The deputy did not speak Spanish and had trouble communicating with the man, but he saw the cut and blood. Investigators had visited Southern Comfort the previous night for what Gualtieri described as a “melee.” They thought the incident might be connected.

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Feidt relayed what he saw to Katzer, who was looking up Morales Velásquez on the computer in his cruiser. Morales Velásquez then took off running.

The sheriff said Katzer chased after the man and tried to shoot him with his electroshock device. He missed. When he eventually caught up, Morales Velásquez was on the stoop of a mobile home, banging on the door and yanking the knob. The deputy didn’t know that was where Morales Velásquez lived. Investigators later learned his son was inside, afraid to answer the door.

Katzer once again deployed his Taser, and this time the probes stuck. Morales Velásquez fell, hitting his head on the concrete.

On the ground, Katzer and another deputy struggled to handcuff the man, who was lying face down. They said Morales Velásquez braced his hands under his body, so Katzer deployed his Taser three more times as a stun gun, making direct contact with the man’s body. The deputies eventually locked his hands behind his back.

Morales Velásquez soon lost consciousness and spent more than a week at the hospital, on life support, until his family decided to end medical aid. He died Aug. 31. His son was put into foster care, but family members are trying to send him back to Guatemala.

Gualtieri said deputies did nothing wrong.

“When somebody runs from you, what are you supposed to do, say, ‘Bye?’” the sheriff said.

Brent Probinsky, a lawyer looking into the case on behalf of Morales Velásquez’s family, said “internal investigations almost always favor the offending officer” so he was not surprised by the state attorney’s conclusion.

“I think the sequence of events is outrageous,” Probinsky said. “He posed no danger to the officers or anyone around him, and they used deadly force.”

Pinellas allows deputies to deploy a Taser whenever someone “actively resists,” Gualtieri said. Running away is enough, though some national experts like the Police Executive Research Forum recommend agencies restrict the use of electroshock devices in cases where a person is fleeing because of the risk of falling.

Gualtieri said he often considers it preferable for deputies to use a Taser rather than resort to a physical struggle.

“Going hands-on with somebody 100 percent of the time is going to be ugly," he said.

People who work with immigrants say fear of law enforcement only grows with bad interactions like the one that led to Morales Velásquez’s death.

Gualtieri also recently advocated for a new state law that requires local law enforcement to recognize detainer requests from ICE, which applies to policy in jails but not for deputies on the street. What that means, for instance, is federal immigration authorities could seek a detainer on Mendez Vasquez and look to deport him now that he has been charged with a crime and booked into jail. But knowledge of the deputies’ contact with him would not have reached ICE if he had not been arrested.

“We’re not the immigration police,” Gualtieri said Thursday.

Advocates say the technical distinction between patrol and detention means little for those on the street, who are already terrified of immigration crackdowns under the Trump administration.

Morales Velásquez had moved to Tampa Bay from Guatemala, his uncle, Augusto Morales Pérez has said, trying to find work and save money for his relatives.

He grew up using an indigenous language, Mam, and did not speak English or much Spanish. Morales Pérez thinks his nephew was scared and misunderstood the deputies that night.

He was still paying off thousands of dollars he owed to a smuggler who helped him reach America before he could begin sending money to his wife and other children in Guatemala.

Gualtieri said Morales Velásquez was working seven days a week, doing nothing wrong.

The sheriff said his agency teaches comprehensive Spanish courses for deputies, but they’re not mandatory. The mobile home parks along U.S. 19, he said, are known to be home to many immigrants. But it’s impractical to staff those zones with only deputies who are fluent, he said.

"We don’t have enough Spanish speakers to do that,” the sheriff said. And, “The Spanish-speaking, Hispanic population is too big.”