Seven Haverhill police officers have been placed on paid administrative leave after a man died during a struggle with officers outside of a seafood restaurant, the city’s police chief said Monday.
The officers, who were not identified, were placed on leave as of last Friday, July 11, Haverhill Police Chief Robert P. Pistone Jr. said.
The man who died, Francis Gigliotti, 43, was acting “erratically” and in a “belligerent manner” when officers tried to restrain him, according to the Essex District Attorney Paul F. Tucker’s office.
During the altercation outside of Bradford Seafood Restaurant & Fish Market on Winter Street, Gigliotti reportedly became unresponsive and was later pronounced dead at a local hospital, officials said.
Video recorded by a bystander and posted on Facebook by Latecia Torres, Gigliotti’s niece, shows about a half-dozen officers crowding around Gigliotti while he is face down on the ground and repeatedly yells for “help.”
A bystander is heard on video telling police to “Be easy with that boy, he has issues.”
Protesters took to the streets of Haverhill Sunday afternoon, calling for police accountability. “We don’t pay you to kill the sick & innocent,” one woman’s handmade poster board sign said.
The dozens who marched from G.A.R. Park to the police department and City Hall also demanded proper training for officers who handle mental health crises.
“He needed support,” said Torres, who recorded the incident. “They brutalized him, they beat him until he couldn’t breathe anymore, and now he’s not here. We are his voice.”
Gigliotti’s fiancée, Michelle Rooney, said Gigliotti struggled with mental health issues after experiencing many losses in his family.
Rooney said she was at home Friday when Gigliotti called her in a panic and asked her to pick him up at the seafood restaurant.
“‘You gotta get here. They gonna kill me,’” Gigliotti told her. Rooney said she next heard cops telling Gigliotti to “stop” and “get down,” and then the call became “all muffled.”
By the time Rooney got there, officers were on top of Gigliotti, and he was turning blue, she said.
“He was yelling, ‘Help me. I can’t breathe.’ And then he just went limp,” she said. “Still, they sat on him. They just kept sitting on him.”
On Monday, Pistone said an investigation is underway.
“Since this matter is under current investigation, the only question I can answer at this time is that 7 officers are on paid administrative leave,” Pistone said in the email.
“Once the investigation is complete, and all of the facts are known, I will be able to provide more information and address the media and public,” Pistone’s email said.
Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez.