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Two Honolulu police officers are under investigation after a 77-year-old man they arrested with force in late December died less than two weeks later due to complications, according to the department. 

Thomas Matias died on Jan. 10 of the “combined effects” of a coronary artery disease and “acute bronchopneumonia“ due to rib fractures and blunt force trauma to the chest, according to the Honolulu Medical Examiner’s Office. The manner of death was listed as homicide. 

Honolulu Police Chief Joe Logan told reporters Wednesday that Matias had been arrested by two officers with the department’s crime reduction unit on the evening of Dec. 28 near a parking area at Ala Moana Center.

The officers, who were conducting “hot spot” policing in the area to investigate vehicle break-ins and stolen cars, said they saw Matias get on a moped that had been reported stolen, Logan said. They had to use physical force during the arrest, he said. 

Because they are plainclothes officers, they were not wearing body cameras, Logan said.

There is surveillance footage of the incident, but the department is not releasing it yet, according to HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu.  

Matias was arrested for unauthorized control of a propelled vehicle but was never formally charged.

Logan did not name the officers, but he said they are on restricted duty and the police department has opened a manslaughter investigation. They have not been charged, he said. 

But Matias’s daughter, Darla Matias, who lives in Lynwood, Washington, said her father was unjustly assaulted and beaten by the officers who arrested him.  

Medical records she provided to Civil Beat show he was taken to Straub Medical Center just after 9 p.m. on Dec. 28 to be evaluated for a head injury while in police custody. 

He was complaining of head pain and had an abrasion to his forehead, the document says. Further evaluation was not conducted and he was signed out against medical advice. 

Darla Matias said that after his evaluation, he spent a few more hours in police custody before officers dropped him off at his apartment. 

Two days later, on Dec. 30, he called his sister complaining of extreme head pain and saying he could hardly breathe. She went to his apartment and called 911, Darla Matias said.

Doctors found three rib fractures and contusion and abrasion of his scalp, according to a medical report. 

The report says he was complaining of “chest, rib and neck pain after getting pulled of (sic) a bike by HPD.”

He was prescribed pain medication, instructed on precautions and discharged, according to the report. 

He was found dead in his apartment on Jan. 10, police said. 

Darla Matias said he had emphysema, but that was not listed as a factor in his death.

“Had he not sustained those injuries he may very well still be alive,” she said. “It’s a horrible way to die especially when you’re by yourself and you can’t breathe and you’re in so much pain.”

She filed a complaint with the Honolulu Police Department’s professional standards office on Feb. 9. She wrote that her father was leaving a T-Mobile store in the Ala Moana area on a motorcycle he had purchased from someone.

As he got on the motorcycle to start it, “he was grabbed by the back of his shirt and pulled off of the bike and slammed to the ground hitting the back of his head hard on the ground,” the complaint says. “The individuals, 2 Honolulu Police Officers, proceeded to beat (assault) my father as he laid on the ground.” 

The officers then took him to Straub Medical Center for evaluation, and on the way, one of them told him, “If they ask you if you want to go in, get admitted, tell them no,” the complaint says. 

“Ultimately our goal is to see these officers reprimanded to the highest degree and satisfactorily losing their right to wear a badge,” she wrote in the complaint. 

HPD first opened  a first-degree assault investigation on Jan. 16, but it was reclassified to a manslaughter investigation based on the medical examiner’s report, Yu said in a statement Wednesday.

Darla Matias said her dad was originally from Kaneohe and lived in Hawaii his whole life. He had five children.

“He wasn’t a law abiding citizen, let’s put it that way,” she said. “He wasn’t father of the year. But he was still our dad. At the end of the day it’s just the principle, that it just wasn’t right what had happened to him, and no one deserves to go through that, no matter what their age.”