Family asks DOJ for help

WAKEMAN — A local man and his family wants the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Richland County and state officials who he contends failed to properly prosecute the men who killed his stepson. The Richland County coroner made a false ruling on the death certificate for a 28-year-old Alex Rios, who was killed by corrections officers at the Richland County jail in 2019, according to records Don Mould, of Wakeman, submitted to the FBI and to Ohio's two U.S. senators and others. Richland County coroner Daniel Burwell ruled that Alex Rios died as the result of an accident caused by excited delirium, which is not a lawful, recognized or valid cause of death ruling in the state of Ohio and most other states. Despite that, excited delirium, which has no scientific basis, was for many years utilized by coroners' offices in cause of death rulings for people in custody who died suddenly after violent encounters with authorities. Critics contend using excited delirium in Alex Rios' case — and in other in-custody death cases — serves to protect officers involved from criminal prosecution. But 18 months after Rios was killed — after a closeup, 5-minute jail video surfaced showing a second-by-second account of his death in harrowing detail — Burwell's false death ruling came under renewed scrutiny. The family sued Burwell in an attempt to force him to correct the death certificate but lost that case in local court, a decision that remains under appeal. Someone later smuggled a copy of the video from the jail on a thumb drive and left it in a plain wrapper package at Rios' parents' home. Local officials have provided no explanation for why the video was withheld from the family for all those months. It was the first moment that Mould and his family became fully aware of exactly what happened to Alex in the jail on that day, and how horrific his death had been. "What transpired is far more egregious than what the whole world witnessed with George Floyd," wrote Edwin Voorhies, senior policy advisor for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, in an extensive report included in the package of documents sent with Mould's March 31 letter to officials. Like Floyd, the Minneapolis man killed in 2020 by a city police officer who kneeled on his throat for nearly 10 minutes and suffocated him, Alex Rios also was suffocated, multiple experts determined, according to the records Mould submitted with the letter. Just days after getting the video from an anonymous source, the county agreed to pay the Rios family $4 million to avoid a wrongful death lawsuit after they showed the video to attorneys representing the county's insurance carrier. The money was set aside to support Alex's three minor children. 'Absurd and cruel' By this time, however, Alex's family had become haunted by his loss and the cruelty they perceived in the way public officials were avoiding accountability. A special prosecutor did indict one of the five jail guards involved in the assault on a homicide charge, but the man was acquitted at trial after a state prosecutor failed to present all the available evidence. "Prosecutor Forrest Thompson and other officials were engaged in constant tactics of delay, stonewalling and purposely keeping our family in the dark, including withholding of the key video of the event for a prolonged period of time," Mould wrote to officials. "In other words, circling the wagons, playing the waiting game, doing nothing, hoping the family fatigues and just goes away." The neglect from local officials was "absurd and cruel," Mould wrote. "We are asking two things: First, that Alex's death and the judicial process it underwent be thoroughly reviewed with a focus on identifying possible civil rights violations. Second, that the death certificate be corrected to reflect the actual cause of death as determined by experts in the field to: a) brain death; b) due to encephalopathy; c) due to mechanical asphyxiation; d) as a result of compressive prone restraint, by others." The corrections officers kicked and punched Rios, used Taser weapons to repeatedly electroshock him and one guard stood on his back pressing down his full weight near the neck area, cutting off Alex's airway as other officers piled on him, preventing him from breathing and causing him to suffocate, the experts determined. It can all be seen in detail in the 5-minute video. A deputy county coroner from Montgomery County who performed the autopsy, during court testimony, said she agreed with that finding but was pressured by her supervisor to put the false finding of excited delirium as the cause. Burwell, who has no forensic skills, does not perform autopsies and did not conduct a credible investigation, went along with the deception, according to the records Mould provided. Mould sent the request for a federal investigation to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost; Deputy Ohio Attonery General Carol O'Brien; U.S. Rep. Bob Latta, R-Bowling Green; U.S. Sen. Jon Husted; U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno; U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi; Julie Yelk, an FBI agent in Cleveland; FBI Director Kash Patel; and the Ohio State Coroners Association. As of Friday Mould had not received any response from any of those entities. The officials, who were contacted this week, also did not respond to questions sent to them for this report about Mould's request and whether they would be responding to it.