Five days before an off-duty CHP motorcycle officer hit and killed a pedestrian in Long Beach, he went to a hospital emergency room complaining of distorted vision in one eye, according to newly retrieved medical records.
Now-former Officer Alfredo Gutierrez’s medical condition was not known by prosecutors or jurors during his misdemeanor trial in May for the 2019 death of 24-year-old Cezannie Mount.
Gutierrez, who hit Mount while riding to work at 4:40 a.m., was charged with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter because he was traveling at nearly 70 mph in a 40-mph zone.The trial ended in a hung jury, and the Long Beach City Prosecutor’s Office announced it would not seek a retrial, partially to spare Mount’s family from another protracted proceeding.
Long Beach City Prosecutor Doug Haubert said his office would have introduced Gutierrez’s eye condition as evidence if prosecutors had known about it.
“It could have been highly relevant to our case because driving at high speeds in the dark is dangerous enough by itself, but having an eye condition, if that is true, could have convinced a jury that what he did was reckless,” Haubert said.
Partial emergency room records viewed by the Southern California News Group show Gutierrez was treated at UC Irvine Medical Center in the early hours of Oct. 22, 2019, for central serous chorioretinopathy, a condition that distorts vision because of a build-up of fluids beneath the retina.
Gutierrez had complained in the emergency room that a “halo pattern” was affecting the vision in his left eye, according to records written by Dr. Catherine Sheils.
“Patient says he was driving around 9 p.m. when he noticed a cloud over his central vision in the left eye,” said the emergency room report. “He states he is able to see through the cloud and the cloud only covers his central vision.”
In another medical visit about a month later, Gutierrez said the condition had persisted, records show.
Less than a week after Gutierrez’s first emergency room visit, his motorcycle fatally struck Mount. The young Long Beach man was crossing Del Amo Boulevard near Cherry Avenue outside of a crosswalk, on Oct 27, 2019, on the officer’s left side — the same side as Gutierrez’s ailing eye.
“This officer had no business being on a motorcycle,” said Annee Della Donna, an attorney representing Mount’s family in a lawsuit against Gutierrez and the California Highway Patrol. “If you can’t see, you shouldn’t be in a car, much less on a motorcycle.”
Mount played basketball at Long Beach Poly High School and was an aspiring hip-hop artist, his family has said. After earning a degree in music from Earlham College in Indiana, he had returned home and was working at Raising Cane’s in Lakewood to pay for studio time to make music.
Della Donna and attorney Eric Dubin discovered the medical records while investigating the lawsuit. They contend Gutierrez did not report his medical condition to prosecutors or civil attorneys. It is unclear whether CHP supervisors knew of his condition at the time of the accident.
The CHP, which declined to comment because of the pending litigation, conducted the accident investigation, although it occurred outside its jurisdiction in the city of Long Beach.
Gutierrez, who worked out of the South Los Angeles CHP office serving the South Bay and Long Beach, sustained serious injuries in the crash and took a medical retirement. Whether he was fit to drive a motorcycle when he hit Mount is up for contention.
Dr. Sunir Garg, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology and a professor of ophthalmology at the Retina Service of Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, said people with central serous chorioretinopathy often can still read a DMV eye chart.
“Most folks with CSR may qualify for a license even though they may not be comfortable behind the wheel,” said Garg, adding that cases should be considered on an individual basis. “People (with CSR) can often read the lines on the eye chart very well, even though it looks really screwy.”
He likened chorioretinopathy to the vision someone would have if grease was smeared on their eyeglasses.
“CSR generally is not going to have profound vision impairment,” and the condition generally goes away in two to three months, Garg said.
