The family of a man who stabbed a SoCal deputy with a screwdriver before being shot and killed while he ran away was awarded $13.1 million by a jury in a lawsuit.
The incident unfolded on Aug. 7, 2020, when Jeffrey Alexander Monroy was walking near Tamarisk Lane in Rancho Mirage, located northwest of Palm Springs. According to the attorneys representing Monroy’s family, the 33-year-old, who worked for his father’s pool service, was looking for a phone to call his brother for a ride home.
Attorneys said that residents of the “affluent” neighborhood called police to report a suspicious person; subsequently, a Riverside County Sheriff’s Department deputy, identified in legal documents as Cpl. Ruben Perez, was dispatched and arrived at the same time as Monroy’s brother.
It was at this point, Monroy’s family’s legal counsel says, that Perez and Monroy got into an altercation and began scuffling as the latter “apparently [was] suffering a mental breakdown.”…