SANTA MARIA - One of the more surprising allegations in the claim for damages by the Covarrubias Family attorney is kidnapping.
"We have made claims as we seem them from an outside perspective", says Covarrubias Family attorney Gil Alvandi, "we don't have all of the facts, so in order to be inclusive we have added every possible cause of action we could."
Another allegation is the inhumane treatment by Santa Maria Police of a prisoner.
In this case the officer is Albert Covarrubias Jr. as officers were trying to arrest him on charges of having unlawful sex with a 17 year girl before he was shot and killed by fellow officer and best friend Matthew Kline.
"I don't think you can be more inhumane than killing somebody unjustifiably", Alvandi says, "he was being arrested, so he falls into the caption of a prisoner, and killing him obviously what was above and beyond what was necessary and inhumane to be shot twice in the neck and once in the back."
The Covarrubias Family legal claim also challenges the accounts of other officers who were there in the moments before, during and after the shooting last January that killed Covarrubias.
"I believe certainly there was a debriefing of what was to be said, and how it was to be said, by the officers involved in the shooting and the officers who were at the DUI checkpoint that night", Alvandi says.
The City of Santa Maria says it will not comment on the legal claim by the Covarrubias Family attorney.
The City of Santa Maria has another three weeks or so to official respond to the Covarrubias Family claim.
Attorney Gil Alvandi says he expects to file a wrongful death lawsuit citing excessive use of police force against the City of Santa Maria and the Santa Maria Police Department.
