A Los Angeles County jury on Friday, June 21, set damages at $40 million in the wrongful death of a Long Beach pedestrian killed in 2019 by a speeding CHP motorcycle officer with an eye ailment that distorted his vision.
An attorney for the family of Cezannie Mount, 24, said Friday that retired Officer Alfredo Gutierrez had reported his eye condition to his superiors but was not removed from motorcycle duty.
“This family has waited 4 1/2 years to find out what happened to their son and the CHP buried the truth,” said attorney Annee Della Donna, who represented the family with attorney Eric Dubin. “(Gutierrez) had no business being on that motorcycle. He couldn’t see.”
While a focal point in the wrongful death lawsuit, Gutierrez’s eye condition was not known to prosecutors and jurors when he was tried in May 2023 on a misdemeanor charge of vehicular manslaughter. The trial ended in a hung jury and Long Beach prosecutors decided not to retry the case.
In the lawsuit filed by Mount’s family, Della Donna and Dubin found Gutierrez’s eye problem while scouring through his medical records. Della Donna accused the California Highway Patrol of not investigating the role that Gutierrez’s ailing eye played in the early morning accident.
“When they came upon the scene, all they saw was an injured officer and a dead young black man … and all they cared about was clearing the officer,” she said.
A CHP official reached late Friday in Sacramento declined comment on the jury verdict.
Gutierrez was riding to work when he hit Mount on Oct. 27, 2019, at 4:40 a.m. on Del Amo Boulevard near Cherry Avenue. Mount was walking along the street median. Gutierrez was said to be traveling at nearly 70 mph in a 40-mph zone.
Although the accident occurred within Long Beach city limits, the CHP arrived and took over the investigation.
Partial medical records reviewed by the Southern California News Group showed that days before the crash, Gutierrez went to a hospital emergency…
Read the full article here
