Former NFL Running Back's Family Sues Over Police Restraint Death

When Doug Martin’s family sent his brain to the Boston University CTE Center, they weren’t just looking for answers about what happened on October 18 of last year—they were searching for context about a life that ended in restraint, struggle, and questions that still don’t have closure.

The former Tampa Bay Buccaneers running back, a first-round pick in the 2012 draft who played seven seasons in the NFL, died during a police encounter in Oakland after officers responded to a break-in call. What followed was the familiar machinery of investigation: body camera footage (though notably incomplete), official accounts, and months of waiting. Now, Douglas and Leslie Martin have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Oakland, responding officers, and the ambulance company involved—pushing the case from investigation into court.

The family’s attorney, John Burris, laid it out plainly: litigation is the mechanism to get answers. According to the lawsuit, officers held Martin face down while pressing on his back after tracking him down. When they rolled him onto his side, they apparently believed he was either sleeping or faking unconsciousness—and only called for medical help once he remained unresponsive. The restraint itself is central to their claim. A pathologist’s second autopsy determined that restraint asphyxiation was the cause of death, a finding that contradicts the initial official narrative of an unresponsive person during a“brief struggle.”

The family’s grievance extends beyond the officers’actions. Paramedics took more than 15 minutes to respond, the suit alleges, and didn’t rush to provide medical care once they arrived. Every delay, every assumed pause, every moment of inaction compounds into a legal argument about what could have been prevented.

Context matters here: Martin’s family noted he was experiencing a mental health crisis at the time of the incident. The brain they sent to Boston—potentially revealing chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative condition linked to repeated head trauma in football—might explain his behavior that night, but as Burris made clear, it doesn’t explain his death. There’s a crucial difference between understanding why someone was in crisis and understanding why the response to that crisis proved fatal.

This case lands in a larger conversation about police restraint, mental health response, and accountability. The missing minutes of body camera footage, the delayed medical response, the interpretation of an unconscious person as someone faking—these aren’t isolated details. They’re the substance of the lawsuit, and they’re what Douglas and Leslie Martin are now asking a court to examine.