Mobile Police Department issues statement after man has ‘medical episode' in patrol car and later dies
UPDATE (June 11, 9.56 p.m.): The cause of death for the man who reportedly experienced a medical episode while in Mobile Police custody has not been confirmed, but officials say it may have been an overdose.
Police officers initiated a traffic stop for an equipment violation around 9:43 p.m. Saturday in the 6000 block of Old Pascagoula Road, according to an Mobile Police Department news release.
Both individuals inside the vehicle didn't have a current driver's license, so officers removed them from the automobile and placed them in patrol cars without restraints while waiting to confirm their identities, the release stated.
A man — identified as Kevin Gardner, 33 — reportedly began experiencing a medical episode, prompting a call to first responders. Theodore-Dawes Fire-Rescue and Mobile County EMS arrived on the scene, but efforts to revive him weren't successful, according to the release.
Theodore Dawes Fire Rescue Chief Franklin Byrd told News 5 Gardner was seizing, unresponsive and went into cardiac arrest. Narcan was administered, but Gardner died at the scene, News 5 learned.
The Gardner family attorney, Chalea Tisdale, questions why it was necessary to have placed the two individuals in the back of the police car.
'Why would they need to be put in a police car, especially the passenger,' Tisdale said. 'It's my understanding Kevin was the passenger in the car.'
The attorney and Gardner's family was never informed of what led to Gardner having a medical emergency.
'I would be curious to know how long was he in the police car in distress before it was noticed? How long did it take EMT to arrive? You know, just lots of normal questions that go through people's minds, you know, to try to figure out what happened,' Tisdale said.
Tisdale told News 5 that body camera video would answer a lot of unknowns.
'What I'm looking for is the events what led up to it,' she said. 'What may have been said or done and could it have been prevented.'
Police are still waiting to hear back from the autopsy and toxicology results.
'I never observed Kevin to be under the influence of anything,' Tisdale said.
Tisdale represented Gardner in a murder trial last month. It ended in a mistrial because the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict.
UPDATE (June 11, 4:10 p.m.): The Mobile Police Department has released a statement about a death investigation after a man reportedly had a medical emergency in a patrol car.
Police officers initiated a traffic stop for an equipment violation around 9:43 p.m. Saturday in the 6000 block of Old Pascagoula Road, according to an MPD news release.
Both individuals inside the vehicle didn't have a current driver's license, so officers removed them from the automobile and placed them in patrol cars without restraints while waiting to confirm their identities, the release stated.
A man — identified as Kevin Gardner, 33 — reportedly began experiencing a medical episode, prompting a call to first responders. Theodore-Dawes Fire-Rescue and Mobile County EMS arrived on the scene, but efforts to revive him weren't successful, according to the release.
'The officers who made the traffic stop Saturday night were not placed on administrative leave, as this was a medical emergency,' an MPD spokesperson said. 'At this time, it appears the officers followed protocol.
'It should be noted, medical personnel were working on Mr. Gardner outside of the MPD patrol unit for some time before he ultimately passed.'
The MPD is awaiting autopsy and toxicology results as the investigation progresses, the spokesperson said.
PREVIOUS REPORTING
MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — A man is dead after a traffic stop led to a visit in a patrol car and a medical episode, according to the Mobile Police Department.
UPDATE: MCPSS reassigns bus driver to different role after bus overturned in February
Police officers initiated a traffic stop for an equipment violation around 9:43 p.m. Saturday in the 6000 block of Old Pascagoula Road, according to an MPD news release.
Police stated that both individuals inside the vehicle were without a current driver's license.
Officers removed them from the vehicle, and the two people sat in the back of patrol units without restraints while waiting to confirm their identities, the release said.
One of the people seated in a patrol unit reportedly began experiencing a medical episode, prompting a call to first responders. Theodore-Dawes Fire-Rescue and Mobile County EMS arrived on the scene, according to the release.
Police said efforts to revive the man — identified as Kevin Gardner, 33 — were unsuccessful, and he was pronounced dead.
Hundreds run across iconic Mobile bridge to help Africatown
The case is under active investigation, and no further information is available, police said.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBS News
25 minutes ago
- CBS News
Man stabbed during attempted robbery in West Woodlawn neighborhood
A 34-year-old man was taken to the hospital after being stabbed during an attempted robbery early Sunday morning on the city's South Side. Chicago police said around 4 a.m., the victim was on the sidewalk in the 700 block of East Marquette Road in the West Woodlawn neighborhood when he was approached by two men who tried to take his belongings at knifepoint. When the victim refused, the men stabbed him in his stomach before leaving the scene in an unknown direction. He was taken to St. Bernards Hospital in fair condition. No arrests were made. Area 1 detectives are investigating.
CNN
27 minutes ago
- CNN
Live updates: Latest on the manhunt for gunman who shot Minnesota state lawmakers
Update: Date: 7 min ago Title: 10 things to know about the shooting suspect Content: As the search continues for the man accused of impersonating a police officer and killing State Rep. Melissa Hortman and wounding State Sen. John Hoffman, a clearer portrait of the suspect is emerging. Here's what we've learned about Vance Boelter: • Work: While his exact employment status was unknown, we know that Boelter had worked for a security company, Praetorian Guard Security Services, which advertised a fleet of 'police type vehicles' and other equipment that could potentially have aided him in appearing to be law enforcement. The firm was registered to Boelter's home address and listed a woman who is apparently his wife as president and CEO. • Religion: He is an outspoken evangelical Christian who traveled to Africa to tell his story and, in at least one sermon, pointedly questioned American morals on sexual orientation, according to videos and social media posts reviewed by CNN. • Hit list: Names on a list found in his car, which CNN obtained, are largely Democrats or figures with ties to Planned Parenthood or the abortion rights movement. The list included lawmakers such as Rep. Ilhan Omar and Sen. Tina Smith. • Political views: He largely shied away from political posts in his publicly available social media feeds and did not discuss abortion rights in any religious speeches reviewed by CNN. In one talk he gave in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2023, he appeared sharply critical of LGBTQ rights. • Link to victim: He served on a state board with Hoffman, records show. In 2019, Gov. Tim Walz put Boelter on the Governor's Workforce Development Board – a group of business owners who recommend policies to the state government. It's unclear how closely Boelter and Hoffman interacted in that role, if at all. • Party affiliation: Boelter registered to vote as a Republican in the early 2000s, state records show. A state document listing his 2019 appointment to a development board noted that he had 'no party preference.' • No record: A search of Minnesota criminal records showed no cases against Boelter aside from some traffic charges. • Education: Boelter's LinkedIn page states he had a doctorate in educational leadership and a master's of science in management, both from Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee, and he used the prefix Dr. on his website and social media. • Family: Social media posts indicate he has multiple children. • Home: Boelter had a property outside the small town of Green Isle, about 50 miles west of Minneapolis, according to records. Read more about the suspect. CNN's Isabelle Chapman, Curt Devine, Yahya Abou-Ghazala, Anna-Maja Rappard, Scott Glover, John Miller and Rob Kuznia contributed to this report. Update: Date: 7 min ago Title: What happened on Saturday Content: State Rep. Melissa Hortman — the top Democrat in the Minnesota House — and her husband were shot and killed in the early hours of Saturday morning, according to Gov. Tim Walz. Police are now searching for 57-year-old Vance Boelter, the main suspect in the killing, who has been described by Governor Tim Walz as an apparent 'politically motivated assassination.' Boelter is also suspected of shooting Minnesota State Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, who survived the shooting and underwent surgery. Yvette Hoffman saved her daughter Hope's life by throwing herself on top of her, a relative told CNN affiliate KARE. Here's what we know: Update: Date: 13 min ago Title: How police found the suspect at Hortman's home Content: Police were responding to a shooting at Democratic State Sen. John Hoffman's home around 2 a.m. when officers went to check on State Rep. Melissa Hortman, who lived about 9 miles away, at around 3:35 a.m. As they arrived at her home, they encountered the suspect, 57-year-old Vance Boelter, dressed like a police officer. As he came out of the house, he exchanged gunfire with the police before escaping on foot, leaving behind what appeared to be a police car at the scene. Police found writings in the vehicle that included a hit list with nearly 70 names. Those named are mostly Democratic politicians or figures with ties to abortion rights, including Minnesota lawmakers Rep. Ilhan Omar and Sen. Tina Smith. Boelter also had survival gear in the vehicle. Boelter is still at large. A shelter-in-place was implemented in Brooklyn Park, but lifted later on Saturday after authorities said they believed he was no longer in the area. Investigators are looking into whether he wore a latex face mask during the shootings, a law enforcement official told CNN. Read part of the police's dispatch audio to emergency services here.
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Political violence is threaded through recent US history. The motives and justifications vary
The assassination of one Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, and the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife at their homes, is just the latest addition to a long and unsettling roll call of political violence in the United States. The list, in the past two months alone: the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. The firebombing of a Colorado march calling for the release of Israeli hostages, and the firebombing of the official residence of Pennsylvania's governor — on a Jewish holiday while he and his family were inside. And here's just a sampling of some other disturbing attacks before that — the assassination of a health care executive on the streets of New York City late last year, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in small-town Pennsylvania during his presidential campaign last year, the 2022 attack on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories, and the 2017 shooting by a liberal gunman at a GOP practice for the congressional softball game. 'We've entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted,' said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at Georgetown University who studies extremism. 'A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture.' Politics behind both individual shootings and massacres Politics have also driven large-scale massacres. Gunmen who killed 11 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, 23 shoppers at a heavily Latino Walmart in El Paso in 2019 and 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery store in 2022 each cited the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of Jews were trying to replace white people with people of color. That has become a staple on parts of the right that support Trump's push to limit immigration. The Anti-Defamation League found that from 2022 through 2024, all of the 61 political killings in the United States were committed by right-wing extremists. That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 people by driving his truck through a crowded New Orleans street before being fatally shot by police. 'You're seeing acts of violence from all different ideologies,' said Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who researches terrorism. 'It feels more random and chaotic and more frequent.' The United States has a long and grim history of political violence, from presidential assassinations dating back to the killing of President Abraham Lincoln to lynchings and violence aimed at Black people in the South to the 1954 shooting inside Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists. Experts say the past few years, however, have likely reached a level not seen since the tumultuous days of the 1960s and 1970s, when icons like Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Ware noted that the most recent surge comes after the new Trump administration has shuttered units that focus on investigating white supremacist extremism and pushed federal law enforcement to spend less time on anti-terrorism and more on detaining people who are in the country illegally. 'We're at the point, after these six weeks, where we have to ask about how effectively the Trump administration is combating terrorism,' Ware said. Of course, one of Trump's first acts in office was to pardon those involved in the largest act of domestic political violence this century — the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, intended to prevent Congress from certifying Trump's 2020 election loss. Those pardons broadcast a signal to would-be extremists on either side of the political debate, Dallek said: 'They sent a very strong message that violence, as long as you're a Trump supporter, will be permitted and may be rewarded." Ideologies aren't always aligned — or coherent Often, those who engage in political violence don't have clearly defined ideologies that easily map onto the country's partisan divides. A man who died after he detonated a car bomb outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic last month left writings urging people not to procreate and expressed what the FBI called 'nihilistic ideations.' But, like clockwork, each political attack seems to inspire partisans to find evidence the attacker is on the other side. Little was known about the man police identified as a suspect in the Minnesota attacks, 57-year-old Vance Boelter. Authorities say they found a list of other apparent targets that included other Democratic officials, abortion clinics and abortion rights advocates, as well as fliers for the day's anti-Trump parades. Conservatives online seized on the fliers — and the fact that Boetler had apparently once been appointed to a state workforce development board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — to claim the suspect must be a liberal. 'The far left is murderously violent,' billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social media site, X. It was reminiscent of the fallout from the attack on Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker's then-82-year-old husband, who was seriously injured by a man wielding a hammer. Right-wing figures theorized the assailant was a secret lover rather than what authorities said he was: a believer in pro-Trump conspiracy theories who broke into the Pelosi home echoing Jan. 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol by saying: 'Where is Nancy?!' On Saturday, Nancy Pelosi posted a statement on X decrying the Minnesota attack. 'All of us must remember that it's not only the act of violence, but also the reaction to it, that can normalize it,' she wrote. Trump had mocked the Pelosis after the 2022 attack, but on Saturday he joined in the official bipartisan condemnation of the Minnesota shootings, calling them 'horrific violence.' The president has, however, consistently broken new ground with his bellicose rhetoric towards his political opponents, who he routinely calls 'sick' and 'evil,' and has talked repeatedly about how violence is needed to quell protests. The Minnesota attack occurred after Trump took the extraordinary step of mobilizing the military to try to control protests against his administration's immigration operations in Los Angeles during the past week, when he pledged to 'HIT' disrespectful protesters and warned of a 'migrant invasion' of the city. Dallek said Trump has been 'both a victim and an accelerant' of the charged, dehumanizing political rhetoric that is flooding the country. 'It feels as if the extremists are in the saddle," he said, 'and the extremists are the ones driving our rhetoric and politics.'
