asphyxia

The state medical examiner’s office ruled Otieno’s death a homicide, finding that he died of “positional and mechanical asphyxia with restraints.”

Yet AP found instructors at several state-certified training centers continue to teach — wrongly — that holding someone facedown doesn’t cause death by what’s known as positional asphyxia, which happens when the chest can’t expand, starving the body of oxygen.

Officers almost always used prone restraint with other force, and within AP’s database medical officials cited prone position or asphyxia due to restraint as a cause or contributing factor in 61 of the 740 cases that involved the maneuver during the investigation’s 2012-2021 timeframe.

While the Georgia Public Safety Training Center could not document exactly what Celinski was taught as a recruit in 2013, its leader of basic training told the AP that positional asphyxia was part of his curriculum, and instructors had to certify that graduates understood it.

Told that, Celinski said positional asphyxia may have been discussed briefly during the 408-hour basic training course.