Salt Lake City Police Broke A Woman’s Leg During An Arrest. Weeks Later, It Had To Be Amputated.
Salt Lake City, UT – Last September, Agnes Martinez was looking for a place she and her dog could sleep for the night. Houseless at the time, she parked her car in a commercial area south of downtown Salt Lake City. Soon after, she was confronted by two Salt Lake City Police officers in an encounter that would end with the loss of her left leg.
Now, Martinez is suing the two officers — Paul Mullenax and Lane Wolfenbarger — for using excessive force during an arrest that left her with a debilitating injury, violating her Fourth Amendment rights. What’s more, her lawsuit claims that the Salt Lake City Police Department (SLCPD) is using excessively violent take downs for nonviolent offenders and training its officers to disregard people’s civil rights.
Martinez, at 5 feet 2 inches tall and 57 years old, hadn’t been parked for long on the night of September 1, 2023 when SLCPD officers Wolfenbarger and Mullenax approached her vehicle during what they called a “proactive patrol,” according to the complaint in a civil suit filed in July in US District Court.
From there, body cam footage, combined with a description of the encounter in the lawsuit, reveals a violent arrest that ended with Agnes’s leg being severely broken as the result of the two officers using a leg sweep take down – a level of force that’s been ruled unconstitutional in cases like Martinez’s.
The encounter began when Wolfenbarger approached Agnes’s car and told her she shouldn’t park where she was because the area had been having “problems,” the lawsuit quotes Officer Wolfenbarger as saying.
As Martinez put on her seat belt and got ready to find another spot to park, Wolfenbarger and Mullenax told her she couldn’t leave. Having detained her, Wolfenbarger told Martinez to step out of her car, where Mullenax questioned her.
After a brief exchange, Wolfenbarger claimed that he smelled marijuana in Martinez’s car. At that point Agnes admitted to having “a little bit of weed” and a pipe in the car, according to the lawsuit and footage. With that, Wolfenbarger told her he was going to search her car. Martinez objected to the search, asking if they had a warrant since her car doubled as her home. Wolfenbarger told her no warrant was needed because of a “vehicle exception.”
On August 30, in light of the critical injury Martinez suffered at the hands of its officers, the Salt Lake City Police Department released some of the body cam footage from the arrest per the department’s Officer Involved Critical Incident policy.
Officers on the scene muted and turned off their body cams at various points, according to the lawsuit, and the department only released certain clips of the footage generated during the encounter.
The footage available from the two officers’ cameras shows the violent arrest. Mullenax stood near Martinez, who looked on as Wolfenbarger riffled through her belongings. A few moments later, Wolfenbarger returned to the drivers side of the car and told Martinez to put her hands behind her back, because she was “going in cuffs.”
Wolfenbarger and Mullenax pushed Martinez against her car as they arrested her. Wolfenbarger claimed that Martinez was resisting as she tensed her arms behind her back, and told her to relax her arms before threatening to take her to the ground. Seconds later, Wolfenbarger says “ground” and sweeps her leg, he and Mullenax piling on top of her.
Immediately, Martinez screams in pain, yelling “my leg” again and again. The two officers wrestle her onto her stomach. Mullenax drags her by her ankles for a moment before saying “her leg just broke.”
Martinez was hospitalized directly after the arrest where her injuries were quickly identified as “limb threatening” with “high potential for limb loss or debilitating injury,” the complaint quotes medical records as saying. She was soon admitted to the intensive care unit.
After weeks in the hospital, and a surgery attempting to save her leg, Agnes Martinez underwent a through-the-knee amputation on September 27, 2023. Two days later, another portion of Martinez’s leg was amputated.
The lawsuit alleges that the Salt Lake City Police officers should have known that their actions violated Martinez’s Fourth Amendment rights and that the department is still using take down methods that are excessively forceful despite a 10th Circuit Court ruling which deemed violent take downs by police unconstitutional when used against nonviolent misdemeanor suspects.
Unicorn Riot could not reach Martinez’s lawyer for comment.
At the end of August, one month after the lawsuit was filed, the Salt Lake City Police Department issued a press release announcing that an investigation into Martinez’s arrest had been launched.
While the department did not make anyone available for comment on the case, the press release said that drawing any connection between Officers Wolfenbarger and Mullenax severely breaking Martinez’s leg and it being amputated weeks later would be “premature and potentially misleading.”
Wolfenbarger is facing charges in at least one other civil complaint, where the plaintiff claims the officer violated his civil rights after he was stopped and illegally searched by Wolfenbarger and other SLCPD officers, according to a suit filed in 2021.
Martinez’s car was impounded on the night of her arrest, and as of July 31, police were still holding her vehicle, the lawsuit says. The district attorney filed criminal charges against Martinez, according to a press release issued by the police department.
Unicorn Riot sought copies of police reports and the full body cam footage from the arrest through public records requests, but was denied both as they have been “classified as protected records pursuant to Utah Code 63G-2-305(10) and can not be released at this time,” according to a department employee.
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