Amid racial justice reckoning across the country, a new lawsuit blaming the death of a Black man in Paterson, New Jersey, has been filed against the police department and medical professionals.
The mother of Jameek Lowery's child claims in the lawsuit filed earlier this month that three police officers beat and choked the 27-year-old in an ambulance. The lawsuit also accused St. Joseph’s University Medical Center and emergency room doctors of medical negligence.
The death of Lowery -- who walked into a police station in New Jersey in January 2019 and wounded up unresponsive while being transported by police to the hospital -- had been ruled a medical event by the Passaic County Prosecutor's Office.
His death sparked outrage in the city of Paterson in January and prompted Mayor Andre Sayegh to promise the city would provide answers as to how Lowery died.
More than seven months after his death, the prosecutor's office announced that its investigation had concluded Lowery's death was not caused by police force, but instead by ingestion of bath salts coupled with a pre-existing medical condition. It said the Medical Examiner concluded that the cause of his death was “Cardiac Arrest during Active Psychosis while Under the influence of Acute N-Ethyl Pentylone (Bath Salts).”
