A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by Karen Goodwin against the city of Bristol, Tennessee, and several police officers and paramedics over the 2017 death of her son, Austin Hunter Turner, according to Associated Press reporting. The ruling, issued Monday, resolved the case on procedural grounds, finding that the lawsuit was filed after Tennessee’s statute of limitations had expired.
Turner, 23, died after police responded to a 911 call for medical help when he was having a seizure, the AP reported. The lawsuit alleged that officers and paramedics used excessive force and failed to provide proper access to medical care during the encounter.
In the argument that led to dismissal, the city of Bristol and the officers and paramedics pointed to timing, saying that the statute of limitations had run by the time Goodwin’s family filed the case. The AP report said the federal judge agreed.
Goodwin filed the lawsuit in 2024 after AP reporters shared police body-camera video they had found. The AP said Goodwin had not seen that video before filing, a point central to the family’s contention that the case could not reasonably have been brought earlier based on what they knew at the time.
The lawsuit’s framing also turned on what the video appeared to show versus what police said happened inside Turner’s apartment after his girlfriend called 911. Attorneys for the city, paramedics, and some officers declined to comment when reached by AP on Tuesday, the report said.
According to the AP, police said they shocked Turner with a Taser and restrained him face down because he was fighting paramedics. The lawsuit countered that the video did not show Turner punching or kicking and that he was in the middle of a seizure rather than actively resisting, AP reported. The filing described what it said was “significant pressure on the back of Mr. Turner’s head and upper back while Turner was face-down, in the prone position, with a spit sock covering his airway, hands cuffed behind his back and legs shackled.”
AP also reported that David Randolph Smith, an attorney for Turner’s mother, said in a statement that the family intends to appeal the dismissal. In that statement to AP, Smith said the official autopsy conclusion attributed Turner’s death to “multiple drug toxicity as a consequence of recreational drug use,” and that it was not until 2023—when body-camera footage surfaced and a forensic pathologist reviewed the evidence—that Goodwin first learned “restraint-induced asphyxia, not drugs, caused his death.” Smith wrote, “We intend to appeal and will ask the Court of Appeals to hold that families in this position are entitled to their day in court when they could not reasonably have discovered the true cause of death until long after the fact, through no fault of their own, but because of misinformation and omissions by government actors.”
The AP report added that the outlet’s investigation found officers in analyzed cases violating guidelines for safely restraining and subduing people, including pinning individuals face down in ways that could restrict breathing or using Tasers repeatedly.