Jail visitor tells court of savage beating by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Handcuffed and face down on the floor, jail visitor Gabriel Carrillo says a group of deputies savagely beat, kicked and kneed him in the back.

Then came a blast of pepper spray -- pointed directly at his already battered and bloody face.

Carrillo said he struggled to tell the deputies, "I can't breathe."

"Shut the (expletive) up. If you can talk, you can breathe," Carrillo testified one deputy yelled back at him.

Blood and mucous drained from Carrillo's nose. He testified his throat burned as he spit up blood and struggled for air.

Carrillo told his harrowing story on the witness stand Thursday, more than four years after a violent encounter with a group of Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies inside the Men's Central Jail visitor center.

Sgt. Eric Gonzalez, Deputy Sussie Ayala and Deputy Fernando Luviano are charged with beating Carrillo in February 2011 and then lying to cover it all up.

All three have pleaded not guilty and say Carrillo was the aggressor who attacked them after one of his wrists was freed from a set of handcuffs.

Carrillo was not an inmate. He was a visitor and went to the Men's Central Jail that day to see his brother, who'd been roughed up by deputies during an arrest a few days prior.

Carrillo and his then-girlfriend acknowledge they both took cellphones into the jail's visitor center despite signs and verbal warnings that cellphones were not permitted.

Carrillo says he was handcuffed and led from the visitor lobby into a deputy break room, shoved up against a refrigerator and patted down. Carrillo testified that he remained calm, but admits he did mouth off to the deputies.

"If I wasn't in handcuffs, it would be a different story," Carrillo testified he told his girlfriend, who was also handcuffed in the deputy break room.

Ayala balked, according to Carrillo. She summoned more deputies over her radio, and they joined the fracas.

"I was knocked unconscious," Carrillo told a rapt courtroom on day three of the federal trial in downtown Los Angeles.

Carrillo says he regained consciousness and found himself "looking up at the ceiling with my head bouncing off the floor from the punches." His face was so swollen black and blue that days later, his then-girlfriend, testified she "couldn't recognize him."

Griselda "Grace" Carrillo, now his wife, took the stand Thursday morning as prosecutors displayed photographs she took days after the incident of Carrillo's injuries. They showed sharp bruises encircling both wrists.

It's proof, prosecutors say, that while deputies pummeled and pepper-sprayed Carrillo, both of his hands were restrained by handcuffs.

The defendants, however, say Carrillo had only one hand cuffed, and he was swinging that freed restraint violently at the deputies.

Based on the deputies' reports, Carrillo faced criminal charges. But the case against him unraveled with evidence that included photos of his two bruised and swollen wrists.

"He was taken under the color of law to a world of lies, deception and abuse," says Carrillo's attorney Ron Kaye, who won a $1.2 million settlement in their case against the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Jurors were also shown a videotaped interview of Carrillo at the jail hours after the beating. In that video, jail supervisors, including one of his alleged attackers, asked Carrillo who beat him up.

Carrillo told them repeatedly - he didn't know. On the witness stand, Carrillo told the jury he was afraid to tell them the truth.

"I was scared of getting beaten again," said Carrillo, who testified his injuries included a broken nose and chemical burns from the pepper spray.

"To this day, he walks around looking over his shoulder because law enforcement beat him up for no reason," says Kaye.

Defense attorneys asked Carrillo about his former membership in a gang, a life Carrillo says he left in 2008 after moving from the Lynwood area to Montebello.

Carrillo showed jurors several of his tattoos, including two that referenced his former gang.

Also taking the stand on Thursday was Deputy Noel Womack, one of two other deputies originally charged in the beating who've now changed their stories.

Womack and Deputy Pantamitr Zunggeemoge took plea deals with the prosecution that allow them to plead guilty to lesser offenses and require their cooperation and testimony against their former colleagues.

Womack told jurors he lied about the encounter for years, even testifying against Carrillo at a preliminary hearing that would determine if Carrillo should stand trial for assaulting the deputies.

"I knew that if I didn't testify that way, I would potentially lose my job if there was anything different than in my report. Then I'd be lying on a police document," Womack said.

Womack says he finally "laid it all out there" for prosecutors and the FBI at a meeting in late May 2015. He told them Carrillo was handcuffed and that he lied in reports to protect himself and his partners.

Womack acknowledges he's now coming clean, at least in part, because it's "in his best interest."

But he insists telling the truth to prosecutors also comes after a lot of "soul searching."

"It's not worth holding on to a lie to protect my partners," Womack testified.

Defense attorneys repeatedly attacked Womack's credibility, at one point asking him, "So, you are a convicted liar?"

Womack admits that - yes, he lied over and over again. He turned to face the jurors as he forcefully insisted he is now telling the truth.

Womack, Zunggeemoge, Ayala and Luviano were all relieved of duty without pay by the LASD in January 2014. Gonzalez left the department in May 2013.

Testimony resumes on Friday with two more prosecution witnesses, and then the defense will begin their case.

Only one of the defendants, Eric Gonzalez, is expected to take the witness stand.