A Coos Bay police officer left a handcuffed man gasping for air and then slumped unconscious in the back of a parked patrol car while he responded to an intimate text about missed “snuggles” and watched TikTok videos inside the station, a federal lawsuit says.
The wrongful death suit filed Wednesday against the city of Coos Bay alleges that three Coos Bay officers ignored signs that Nathan Bradford Smith was overdosing from methamphetamine during his July 7, 2024, arrest and failed to get him immediate medical care.
It alleges negligence and abuse of a vulnerable person and “deliberate indifference” by the officers involved.
Smith, 33, who suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, was pronounced dead at a Coos Bay hospital of “hyperthermia due to methamphetamine intoxication,” according to the suit. His “multiple layers of heavy clothing” likely contributed to his overheating, the suit says.
Coos Bay police Chief Chris Chapanar and city attorney Nate McClintock did not return multiple messages left by phone and email.
Police dash camera footage captured Smith’s heavy panting and his labored breathing once he was placed in the patrol car, a state police investigator wrote in her review of Smith’s death.
Smith sat upright, his left leg shaking, as he breathed quickly and in an “odd pattern,” his chest rising and falling rapidly, the report said.
Coos Bay officers had arrested Smith on a disorderly conduct allegation outside a Motel 6 upon finding him lying in the street.
Martin drove Smith to the Coos Bay Police Department, parked in a covered lot and left Smith in the car alone for eight minutes, state police Sgt. Cristina L. Nibblett wrote in her investigative report.
She noted that the video showed Smith slump over to the left side of the seat with his head tilting back after several minutes.
When Martin emerged from the station and discovered Smith unconscious, he gave him one dose of Narcan, the overdose-reversal drug, but it had no effect and he summoned an ambulance, according to the state police report.
When paramedics arrived, they discovered Smith’s body temperature was 107 degrees, the report said.
“It would be clear to any reasonable officer that Mr. Smith was suffering from a medical episode and needed to be assessed by medical professionals,” the lawsuit says. “Instead, the officers decided to take Mr. Smith into custody on a dubious ‘Disorderly Conduct 2’ charge.”
No criminal charges resulted from the state police investigation, Nibblett wrote in her report.
It’s unclear if the Coos County District Attorney ever reviewed Smith’s death in police custody. The district attorney did not return messages seeking comment.
DAY OF ARREST
Police had two encounters with Smith earlier in the day before arresting him, according to the state police investigation.
Around 11 a.m., police removed a methamphetamine pipe from Smith when they saw him sitting behind a Les Schwab tire store while they were on an unrelated call.
Around 3 p.m., police responded to another business on a report of a man screaming outside and scaring customers. They found Smith and warned him that they would arrest him the next time, according to the state police report.
At 5:01 p.m., three officers responded to a call from a Motel 6 employee reporting a man lying on the sidewalk in front of the motel on North Bayshore Drive.
They found Smith lying on his back in the shoulder of the road, his arms flailing, dressed in a heavy coat and rain pants.
They immediately told Martin he was under arrest, asked him to stand and then tried to handcuff him when he stayed on the ground. They rolled him onto his stomach.
Officer Wesley O’Connor put his weight on Smith’s left shoulder to try to get Smith to remove his hand from inside his coat sleeve. O’Connor grabbed his left wrist and Martin grabbed his right wrist.
Once they cuffed him, they rolled Smith onto his side, told him to move his knees toward his chest and he did so, according to the state police report.
Smith’s breathing at this point was “loud and somewhat labored,” according to Nibblett, who reviewed both the dash camera videos and police body camera videos.
Camera video from Martin’s patrol car showed Smith struggled to get into the car. He gasped for air with his eyes closed, the suit says.
Martin took off but then quickly pulled over and sprayed Glade air freshener into the back of his patrol car, the suit says.
Martin pulled away again at 5:10 p.m. and drove to the Coos Bay Police Department, arriving at 5:13 p.m., according to the dash camera video. The windows of the car remained closed on the 65-degree sunny day, according to the state police report.
While inside the headquarters, Martin read and responded to a text message to him that read, “I’m so ready for snuggles I feel like i haven’t seen you in a week,” the state police report said.
Martin then clicked on his TikTok profile and scrolled through videos, pressing the heart emoji to like a list of videos, according to the report.
At one point, Martin removed his body camera and turned it around toward his outer vest so it wouldn’t capture whatever he did next, Nibblett wrote.
SUFFERED CARDIAC ARREST
Martin returned to the car at 5:21 p.m. and found Smith unconscious and tried to roust him by rubbing his hand on Smith’s chest, according to the state police sergeant and the car’s dash cam video.
He got no response and then administered a dose of Narcan he retrieved from the trunk of his car before calling for an ambulance, the state police report said.
An ambulance arrived at 5:24 p.m. Paramedics removed Smith from the car, had his handcuffs removed and took off his heavy jacket and rushed him to Bay Area Hospital. He went into cardiac arrest at the hospital and was pronounced dead at 6:25 p.m., according to the suit.
“Had officers taken Mr. Smith directly to Bay Area Hospital from Motel 6 or called an ambulance to the scene, emergency department staff would have had over 40 minutes to stabilize Mr. Smith prior to the time he suffered cardiac arrest,” the suit says.
The three officers involved in Smith’s arrest — Martin, O’Connor and Officer Tristan Smith — acknowledged in written statements to state police that they knew about Nathan Smith’s history of drug use and mental illness.
Smith had been admitted at least twice before to the Oregon State Hospital after he was found unable to participate in his defense, according to court records. One of the hospitalizations lasted more than a year in 2020, the records show.
A month before his death, he had been placed in the City Center Motel in North Bend through the support of Coos Health and Wellness, said his father, Kurt Smith. His father told state police that his son had stopped taking his psychiatric medications several months earlier because he didn’t like the side effects.
His father said he had a nice visit with his son a week before his death at the motel.
His son had previously stayed in a room at the Motel 6 where he was found at the time of his arrest and had been living on the street before that.
‘NO OFFICERS AVAILABLE TO MONITOR’
Nathan Smith had been flagged in the police database as an “officer safety risk” because of his history of drug use, mental illness and fights with officers, according to the state police investigator’s report.
Nathan Smith’s mother, Jennifer Smith, had expressed concern about her son’s safety, according to the suit, because his name had been posted on a social media website called “Feral people in Coos Bay,” listing the multiple misdemeanor charges he’s faced over the years.
In a written statement to state police, Martin said he decided to arrest Smith outside the Motel 6 and handcuff him while he was on the ground “due to Smith’s violent tendencies.”
“I know narcotics can cause people to become more agitated, aggravated, paranoid, confrontational and delusional,” Smith wrote.
The state police investigator sent follow-up questions to the officers: Was Martin’s car left running when parked at the police station? Was the air conditioning on? Were the windows open? Was there anyone monitoring Nathan Smith while Officer Martin was gone? What was Martin doing while he was in the Coos Bay police department?
Martin wrote that he went into the police station to call another officer “due to it being shift change,” the state police report said.
He was also trying to find a sergeant to determine if he needed to write a probable cause affidavit to charge Smith for having someone else’s wallet, according to the investigative report.
Martin said he left his patrol car running with the air conditioning on. The back windows remained up because they weren’t working properly, he told state police.
“There were no officers available to monitor Nathan” while he was inside the station, Martin told the investigator.
He didn’t respond to questions about his texting or TikTok scrolling.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene by his parents on behalf of their son’s estate, notes that Bay Area Hospital’s ER is 1.5 miles from Motel 6 while the police department was about a mile away in the opposite direction.
It seeks unspecified damages.
Kurt Smith said local police came to his work and informed him of his son’s death but shared none of the circumstances. He said he learned the cause of death from the funeral home.
“He didn’t deserve to just be left to die,” the father said.
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