Family of man who died after Tasering seeks answers

When Jessica Cruz's coworker walked over to her Monday afternoon and said a homicide detective had been on the phone, looking to speak with her, Cruz knew something had happened to her boyfriend.

Omar Lopez, 24, was supposed to have spent the previous night with his best friend and to have returned home that morning. When he failed to show, a worried Cruz called the friend's house, but he, too, said Lopez had never appeared.

Cruz left for work with a sense of mounting dread. And when the homicide detectives called that afternoon, "I thought the worst," she said.

Detectives soon confirmed her fears. Lopez had died that morning, shortly after getting Tasered during a struggle with a SEPTA police officer at the Market-Frankford El's Huntingdon station.

Four days after Lopez's death, the coroner has not been able to determine why he died, and the Philadelphia Police Department is still investigating the case.

SEPTA police said they were driving Lopez to a hospital - standard procedure when someone has been Tasered - when he stopped responding to them. He was pronounced dead at Aria Health-Frankford Campus just before 3 a.m.

Cruz said she and Lopez's family were in shock. It wasn't like Lopez, she said, to fight with a cop.

Lopez spent time in jail in 2013 on a misdemeanor drug-possession charge, and had a drug-dealing conviction for which he was given probation.

"He was escorted out peacefully," Cruz said, referencing the surveillance video released by SEPTA police showing Cruz and the officer leaving the station.

"What happened between him going down the steps to fighting outside?" she said, wiping away tears in the small, bright apartment she and her boyfriend shared in Kensington.

According to SEPTA's account of the incident, a SEPTA police officer found Lopez inside the Huntingdon station - a few blocks from the couple's apartment - just before 2 a.m. Monday. The station was closing, and the officer escorted Lopez out. The two were captured on video walking calmly down the station's stairs to the street.

But once outside, police said, Lopez got into a loud argument with another man on the street. Police said the officer stepped in to intervene, and ended up tussling on the ground with Lopez. At one point, Lopez bit the officer, who used a Taser to subdue him. Once backup arrived, Lopez was placed, conscious and in handcuffs, in the backseat of a squad car. Within the hour he was dead.

On the day before his death, Cruz said, she and Lopez had argued briefly: The couple's 8-month-old daughter, Olivia, was off on a trip to Sesame Place with her grandmother that morning, and Lopez had been upset that he couldn't see her. But the two had made up before she left for work, she said.

"I'll meet you at home," Lopez told her. Those were his last words to her.

Cruz described Lopez, whom she was with for eight years, as a religious man who doted on his three children and liked to draw in his spare time.

He worked as a cook at the bar across the street from the couple's apartment, but had taken time off in recent weeks to stay with Olivia while Cruz went to work at a collection agency.

He had made plans to start classes at a technical school next week, and wanted to get into the HVAC industry, she said.

"Everything he was about to do, it was for his kids," she said.

Cruz said the family was hoping Lopez's autopsy results will bring some clarity to his death. She did not know of any medical conditions that could have caused his death, she added.

"Everyone's having a hard time understanding what happened," she said. Even now, she said, she catches herself still waiting for her boyfriend to come home.

awhelan@philly.com

215-854-2961@aubreyjwhelan