Jovany Mercado’s death spurs family’s push for police reform
From left, Jovany Mercado's father, Juan Mercado; sister, Ruby Mercado; and mother, Rosa Mercado, stand outside the Mercado family home in Ogden. Jovany Mercado, in the photo held by Rosa Mercado, was shot and killed in a confrontation with police on Aug. 16, 2019, as he exited the carport behind them.
From right, Jovany Mercado's father, Juan Mercado; sister, Ruby Mercado; and mother, Rosa Mercado, stand outside the Mercado family home in Ogden. Jovany Mercado, in the photo held by Ruby Mercado, was shot and killed in a confrontation with police on Aug. 16, 2019, as he exited the carport behind them.
OGDEN — Jovany Mercado wasn’t perfect.
He suffered from schizophrenia. He’d had a handful of brushes with the law. “We don’t want to hide the mistakes that he made along the way,” said Ruby Mercado, his sister.
That he ended up dying in a hail of bullets outside his Ogden home at the hands of police, however, that’s just too much. It shouldn’t have ended that way, she and other family members say. It didn’t have to end that way.
“I have lost my mom. I have lost my dad. Rest in peace,” said Juan Mercado, Jovany’s father. “But losing a son? Oh my God, that’s something. … Under the circumstances, it’s horrible. You can’t find peace. The way that he was taken away from us, it’s just devastating. It’s horrible.”
Photo supplied
Jovany Mercado in an undated photo
Juan, along with wife Rosa Mercado, Jovany’s mom, filed suit last month in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City against the city of Ogden and the four Ogden Police Department officers involved in the Aug. 16, 2019, incident. They charge that the police response that night amounted to an unconstitutional use of deadly force. With the city yet to formally respond, the case is winding its way through court. More broadly, the Mercados have started raising their voices, calling for police reform, for a less violent way of handling confrontations like the one last August.
Meantime, a complicated picture emerges of Jovany Mercado — artistic and musical on the one hand, but also seemingly tormented by mental illness, schizophrenia. Sad, because he couldn’t see his two young children as often as he would have liked after separating from his wife, but given to writing in his free moments as a form of release.
“He was a poet for sure,” said Ruby. “If he went through struggles, he would jot that down on paper and let it out.”
Ruby, 24, isn’t sure what was going through Jovany’s head that evening of Aug. 16 when neighbors called police about a suspicious man — her older brother, it turns out — walking around the neighborhood with a knife. She had seen him maybe 20 minutes before the confrontation, before she left for a friend’s house, and nothing had seemed out of sorts.
“That night I have no idea if it was schizophrenia or something like that,” she said.
He was living with his parents at their house in the 800 block of 32nd Street. When police arrived on the scene — one initially and then three more — they encountered Jovany in a carport of the home that exits to Gramercy Avenue. He was alone there and his mom and other sister Melanie were inside the home, unaware of what was transpiring.
The responding officers saw a knife in Jovany’s hand, and as he walked toward them, they repeatedly ordered him to drop it. He held onto the knife and continued walking toward police without saying anything as the commands continued.
Ultimately the officers opened fire, unsure of Jovany’s intentions. They fired 20 bullets in all, hitting him 16 times, according to a subsequent Weber County Attorney’s Office investigation that determined the officers’ actions were justified.
Video of the incident from the body cameras police were wearing shows Jovany, 26, approaching Gramercy Avenue from the back of the carport at his parents’ home, from an area where he would typically sit and write. As he reaches the sidewalk, exiting the carport, the officers fire and he falls forward onto the ground.
“They did everything they possibly could to avoid using lethal force… It’s tragic that something like that has to happen, but there was no other way it could have been handled,” said Heather White, the Salt Lake City attorney representing Ogden in the federal lawsuit.
Some of the officers were backing up as Jovany approached, White said. But even so, three officers were within 21 feet of him when they fired — 15 feet, 16 feet and 18 feet away, respectively — close enough to potentially be in mortal danger had he charged them, she maintains.
The Mercados, though, insist that the response was out of proportion to the actual danger of the situation. They’ve demonstrated several times against police and the county attorney’s office since last year’s confrontation. They filed the lawsuit and they’ve spearheaded creation of a new organization, El Comité Social Justice Movement. They’ve taken part in Black Lives Matter events in Weber County, called in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. In short, they’ve become activists in the cause against police brutality, against excessive police violence.
Photo supplied
A mural of Jovany Mercado at 900 S. 300 West in Salt Lake City. It was painted in late July 2020.
“Never even crossed my mind,” said Juan, asked whether he took part in political demonstrations or paid attention to things like the Black Lives Matter movement before his son’s death. In fact, Juan, a railroad foreman, said up until Jovany’s death, the extent of his political involvement — if you want to call it that — was donating food and money to help those in need.
Ruby, likewise, wasn’t active politically, had no link to organizations like Black Lives Matter.
“It kind of really opens your eyes. It’s sad that you have to go through this to really understand what they’re fighting for and what is going on outside in the world,” she said.
’HE WAS REALLY MELLOW'
Jovany, like his three younger siblings — Ruby, Melanie and a brother, Edwin — was born in Ogden and attended Ogden schools.
He hung around with a rough crowd in junior high school. Coaxing from his parents, though, seemed to help in keeping him on the straight and narrow, and he had an artistic, creative side. He got good grades, Ruby said, and played guitar and flute at Ogden High School.
He married young, and that created new pressures, Ruby said. A July 25, 2015, article in the Standard-Examiner documents a domestic dispute that resulted in a foot injury after his wife drove over his foot. There were brushes with the law, resulting in misdemeanor convictions. Later came the diagnosis for schizophrenia.
“I know he tried some medicines. Some worked, some didn’t,” Ruby said.
He went to a Davis County hospital for a time for depression, Ruby said, and also spent a stint in drug rehab in Texas as he tried to work through things with his parents’ help. Through it all, his family says he was generally a laid-back guy and would own up to it when he messed up.
“He was really mellow… He was not violent. He was not a violent person at all,” said his dad.
At the time of his death, Jovany worked at a nutritional supplement company, was on track for a supervisory post and, despite whatever he felt inside, seemed to be able to find quiet time in a covered area behind the carport at his parents’ home.
“He liked to spend a lot of time back there, just writing and drawing,” Ruby said.
Indeed, that Jovany’s life would come to an end the way it did is still something the family wrestles with. Juan has watched video of the confrontation with police over and over, trying to figure out where things went wrong, how it could’ve ended another way. Why so many bullets? Jovany seemed to drop the knife after the first one, yet the flurry of bullets continued, even, seemingly, when he was on the ground.
“It’s four officers. Out of the four, none of them even attempted a Taser, pepper spray him, a baton … Immediately they shoot. They had their weapons out,” said Juan. “It was managed pretty bad. It wasn’t managed the right way.”
Ruby watches the video of the incident, and to her, her brother seems someone out of sorts, not someone bent on violence.
“He seems to have no idea what’s going on. He doesn’t look like he’s fully there,” she said. “I don’t even know if he knew he had the knife in his hand, honestly.”
A bullet from the confrontation is still embedded in the Mercado home and Juan can point to several other places around the carport that got dinged when the four officers’ fired their guns. The lawsuit notes that Jovany was disoriented, didn’t threaten anybody and that Utah allows carrying of knives like the one he had.
“An execution, all the bullets that were flying,” Juan said.
The suit against the city is his way of calling attention to the issue, Juan said. It’s his way of making a stand for police reform, for a new, less violent way of handling situations like the confrontation last August.
“Really we can’t change what happened that night. But we can change it for somebody else’s children, hopefully,” Ruby said.
“If we have saved one life, we have made a difference,” Juan added. “My whole intention — I don’t want anybody else to go through what I’m going through.”