A federal lawsuit alleges that an Oregon police officer left a handcuffed man suffering a fatal overdose in the back of a patrol car and went inside a police station to scroll TikTok and send intimate text messages.
The family of Nathan Bradford Smith filed a wrongful death lawsuit accusing police in Coos Bay, Oregon, of negligence, abuse of a vulnerable person, and “deliberate indifference,” after Smith suffered a methamphetamine overdose during a 2024 arrest and lost consciousness in the back of a police car.
The 33-year-old’s arrest and dying moments on July 7, 2024, were caught on dashcam video.
After he was placed in the back of a police car, he was seen breathing and panting heavily and slumping over in the backseat.
It only took police three minutes to drive to the police station, but after arriving, an officer left Smith alone in the car and went inside, where he watched videos on TikTok and replied to texts. One message he sent read, “I’m so ready for snuggles I feel like i haven’t seen you in a week.”
The cop also turned his body camera around to hide whatever he did next on his phone.
Smith was left inside the car unattended for eight minutes.
When the officer finally returned, he found Smith unconscious. After failing to rouse him, he grabbed a Narcan dose from his trunk and administered it to Smith, then called for an ambulance, according to a state police report.
When paramedics arrived, they discovered Smith’s body temperature was 107.3 degrees. They rushed him to a hospital, where he went into cardiac arrest and died.
A total of 40 minutes elapsed between the time Smith was arrested and the time he went into cardiac arrest, the complaint states.
Doctors listed his cause of death as “hyperthermia due to methamphetamine intoxication and probable exogenous contribution from wearing multiple layers of heavy clothing.”
“When these officers found him, he was clearly showing the signs of medical distress, and what we know, when he finally did get to see a doctor, is that his temperature was 107. He was hyperthermic, and he was going to die. And unfortunately, he did,” lead attorney Juan Chavez, with the Oregon Justice Resource Center, told KGW. “There was a 40-minute delay in getting him critical medical assistance.”
When state police investigated Smith’s death, they learned that officers had two encounters with him earlier that day. During the first encounter, they found him sitting outside a store and removed a meth pipe from his possession while they were on an unrelated call.
In the second encounter, they were called to a business where Smith was reportedly screaming and scaring customers. Officers warned him they would arrest him after the next call.
Later that afternoon, someone called 911 after seeing Smith lying on the side of the road near a Motel 6, flailing his arms. When police arrived, they struggled to get Smith to stand up and move on his own and had to help him into the patrol car.
According to a state investigator’s report, Smith had been flagged in the local police database as “officer safety risk” due to his history of drug use, mental illness and fights with officers.
Police told state investigators they decided to arrest Smith at the Motel 6 due to his “violent tendencies” from previous encounters.
In a written statement, the cop who drove Smith to the police station said he left Smith in the car to call another officer “due to it being a shift change,” and he also wanted to ask a sergeant whether he needed to write a probable cause affidavit to charge Smith with having another person’s wallet.
“There were no other officers to monitor Nathan,” he told state police.
The officer added that he left his patrol car on with the air conditioning running, and that the back windows remained up because they weren’t working correctly.
No criminal charges were filed against any of the officers involved in Smith’s arrest after state police concluded their investigation.
Smith’s father told the Oregonian newspaper that police told him his son died but failed to share the circumstances of his death. He didn’t learn the cause of death until he visited the funeral home.
“He didn’t deserve to just be left to die,” Kurt Smith said.
The complaint seeks unspecified damages and alleges the officers were “deliberately indifferent to Mr. Smith’s serious medical need or otherwise serious risk of harm in not calling for medical attention or otherwise rendering aid to a person with Mr. Smith’s conditions in their custody.”
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