Officer body-worn camera video obtained by NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit under the state’s Public Records Act shows that a handcuffed San Francisco man twice complained that he couldn’t breathe before his in-custody death back in 2022. The mother of Kurt Von Boehrens, 35, has filed a fe deral civil rights lawsuit, alleging that first responders failed to monitor his vital signs as they held him face down in handcuffs for several minutes. The incident began, police say, when Von Boehrens, an Army veteran, pulled a fire alarm on Halibut Court on Treasure Island the afternoon of March 16, 2022. Von Boehrens was at the apartment complex on Halibut to attend a remote session of Veterans Justice Court dealing with a drug case – due to struggles with addiction. Von Boehrens recalled in a 2014 YouTube video that those struggles began when he was in jump school. “I just kind of went haywire,” he said. “I was just out there, man, getting wasted.”  The court hearing on March 22 was over, authorities said, when he pulled the alarm. “Advised by engine, we are going to need a Code 3 emergency response to this location for a potential domestic dispute,” according to a recording of the police radio transmissions related to the call. When the two officers arrived, according to the District Attorney’s Office review of the case, they saw Von Boehrens throw a chunk of concrete and break an apartment window. They then tell him to get on the ground and grab him, according to the officer body worn camera video of the incident. “I’m not a bad guy,” Von Boehrens tells the officers. “You’re not in trouble, get on the ground!” an officer says to Von Boehrens, who responds, “Help me! Help me!” and pleads: “I love you guys…don’t hurt me.” After a short struggle, the video shows police had him in handcuffs. Firefighters then help to put Von Boehrens in white ribbons, known as soft restraints. “Are you going to be cool if I put you on your side?” one of the first responders asks the now handcuffed Von Boehrens, who keeps saying “Help me! What did I do wrong?” “We’re just going to put you on the gurney okay, we just want to help you,” one of the first responders tells Von Boehrens. But one minute and 14 seconds after being handcuffed, Von Boehrens first says: “I can’t breathe!” The officers are putting Von Boehrens, who is still not fully cooperating, in restraints at that time. A minute later, Von Boehrens again says, “I can’t breathe!” “You can see that Kurt is fully prone on the ground —  which means that he’s face down on his belly with his face in the pavement—and he reports a second time, ‘I can’t breathe!’’’ said Sanjay Schmidt, the attorney representing Von Boehrens’ mother in a lawsuit alleging first responders violated Von Boehrens’ civil rights. Seven minutes after he was first restrained, Von Boehrens says: “I love you guys.” Those are his final words audible on the video. Soon, first responders can be seen rolling him over. In the process, he appears to vomit after they remove a so-called spit mask that had been over his head. “Stay with us! Stay with us!’’ one of the responders says. But Schmidt says in the lawsuit that crews never checked Von Boehrens’ vital signs in that crucial, seven-minute period. Although they say he’s breathing, the video shows the moment crews soon realize he is not moving. And the video also captures the moment they see his neck is blue, a recognized sign of a loss of oxygen. Despite efforts to revive him, Von Boehrens died six hours later at San Francisco General Hospital. “They killed him, trying to get him on a gurney,” Schmidt said. The role, if any, that restraint played in his death is in dispute. Schmidt says the forensic experts he hired concluded Von Boehrens died from “restraint asphyxia” and he maintains in the lawsuit the department didn’t follow established protocols to prevent it. “He did not pose any kind of imminent threat to any of the officers or anyone present,” Schmidt said. While the official autopsy found his brain had been starved of oxygen, the chief medical examiner’s office autopsy attributed his death to the toxic effects of methamphetamine and alcohol “during exertion with physical restraint.” The report, however, did not mention Von Boehrens had twice said he couldn’t breathe. Days after his death, the fire department issued a bulletin instructing its crews to make sure there was someone designated to continuously track vital signs of people under restraint. The City Attorney’s Office said that while it looks forward to presenting its case in court, it would not discuss the details of the ongoing litigation. Last year, the District Attorney’s office completed its review of the facts and concluded, in its report on the case,  that police and fire crews “appropriately responded to rapidly evolving circumstances” and concluded that being under restraint  “might not have improved Von Boehrens’ chances for survival, the same event cannot be the singular or even the dominant cause of Von Boehrens’ death.” “I’m going to live through this — I’m going to stand up for my son,” said Mary Ellen Hannigan, who says her son died for no reason. “The firemen are the people you call when you want help, not to kill you.” She has been watching deposition testimony in the case and told us she’s angry at how Von Boehrens is being portrayed in the litigation. “They’re treating my son like he was of no import — like he was nothing –like he was this useless drug addict that they got rid of,” she said in a recent interview. But that, she says, only makes her more determined to see the case through. “We loved Kurt very much and we want justice for him — and I think that we can get justice. I hope that we can get justice.” ...read more read less