The family of a man fatally struck by an Escondido police patrol car last August while being chased on his e-bike has filed a wrongful death and excessive force lawsuit against the city and the officer who was driving.
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The lawsuit, filed Monday in San Diego federal court, claims that 39-year-old Jacob Illian died while trying to avoid a “consensual encounter” with police on Aug. 21 when he rode onto a bike path and was pursued by Officer Jason Ingco, who “deliberately accelerated, intentionally striking Illian’s bicycle from behind.”
The impact knocked him off his bike, and he was then run over by the officer’s car, the lawsuit said. He died about half an hour later.
Ingco, 35, last week pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in connection with the fatal collision. A trial has been set for September. The officer is on paid administrative leave and remains out of custody on his own recognizance.
Filed by Illian’s wife and other family members, the lawsuit alleges excessive force and wrongful death, among other claims. It also contends that Illian had been the subject of “targeted and harassing police contacts in the past” and that there was no justification for the pursuit.
The Escondido Police Department and the city attorney did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
The day he died, Illian was riding his e-bike to go pick up his then-12-year-old daughter from school when police tried to pull him over, his family said last week. Illian suffered from partial paralysis due to what family members said was an earlier gunshot wound to the neck. Illian also had a second daughter and had worked as a car detailer and in construction before going on disability, his family said.
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“Throughout the pursuit, Mr. Illian was unarmed. He posed no threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officers or to any other person,” the lawsuit said. “… Officer Ingco used his patrol car as an instrument of deadly force against a non-threatening man on a bicycle.”
According to the lawsuit, the city of Escondido doesn’t have written policies governing the pursuit of a person riding a bicycle or an e-bike or the operation of patrol vehicles on bicycle paths. It also doesn’t have a policy that outlines when ramming a vehicle is or is not permitted or a policy that “tells an officer when, if ever, vehicular force may be used to stop a fleeing bicyclist.”
The suit also claims the city has not provided officers with annual vehicle-pursuit training as required under the state vehicle code.
“These are not technical defects,” the lawsuit said. “A police department that adopts a generic template, never tailors it, leaves the authorization of lethal vehicular force to a cross-reference that leads to silence, and maintains no policy at all for the pursuit of bicyclists or for the operation of patrol vehicles on closed paths, has left its officers without meaningful guidance in precisely the situation that killed Jacob Illian.”
The suit listed several other pursuits involving Escondido officers that ended in deaths dating back to 2017. It claims the city has “a longstanding and widespread custom” of initiating pursuits of people suspected of minor offenses without regard to whether the danger created by the pursuit outweighs the need for immediate apprehension.
“Mr. Illian was identifiable and could have been safely apprehended at a later time,” the suit said. “No reasonable balance of these factors permitted the pursuit, the speed at which it was conducted, or its termination by vehicular impact.”
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The family is asking for unspecified monetary damages.
