Family lose court challenge over son's 'chokehold' death

A judge has upheld a decision not to charge anyone in the case of a man who died after being restrained in a "chokehold" outside a pub.

Father-of-two Gavin Brown was held in that position for at least six minutes and 19 seconds outside the Melville Hotel pub in Stretford in 2019.

In 2021, an inquest jury concluded Mr Brown was unlawfully killed and "physical restraint" caused his death yet the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) declined to bring any charges.

Mr Brown's family had applied for a judicial review of the decision, but the High Court ruled that the CPS had acted reasonably.

Mr Brown, 29, had been witnessed punching a doorman outside the pub on 12 April 2019, sparking a fight in which he "gouged" at the doorman's eye as they struggled on the floor, the court heard.

Another customer in the pub, former soldier Stefan O'Donnell, who had drunk eight pints of lager before the incident, became involved and grabbed Mr Brown around the neck in what his lawyers described as a "Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) style chokehold".

When police arrived, they placed Mr Brown in handcuffs only to find that he was unconscious.

He died in hospital eight days later, with a post-mortem concluding he had suffered a cardiac arrest due to being physically restrained.

Five people were arrested by Greater Manchester Police (GMP), but all were released with no further action.

After the inquest, lawyers for Mr Brown's family argued that the pub's licensed door supervisor that day, Amechi Omeje, should have faced a charge of gross negligence manslaughter for failing to intervene and check that Mr Brown was safe.

To bring such a charge, the prosecution must be satisfied there was a reasonable chance of proving six necessary factors in a trial.

The court heard that the CPS concluded Mr Omeje did have a duty of care to Mr Brown under the terms of his security licence, which included "training on the dangers of a rear-naked chokehold", and that he breached that duty by failing to conduct a welfare check.

However, it said there was no evidence to prove at which point in the struggle Mr Brown suffered fatal injuries, or when Mr Omeje should have stepped in.

The CPS also found that there was no reasonable chance of proving that Mr Omeje's negligence was "truly, exceptionally bad" - another element of the charge.

A lawyer for the CPS said Mr Omeje's failure to check on Mr Brown came in the context of a "serious and potentially ongoing assault on a colleague" which resulted in a "reasonable need" to restrain Mr Brown until the police arrived.

Judge Mr Justice Fordham, who carried out the review, said he was unable to find any "error of approach or legal inadequacy" in the decision taken by the CPS and rejected the review.

Mr Brown's family are now liable to pay legal costs for the CPS.

In a statement, his family said Mr Brown was "a son, brother, dad, uncle, nephew and cousin" who "had a big heart".

Mr Brown's sister, Sophie Penrose, previously told the BBC she was "disgusted" when she found out there was no further action against anyone arrested by GMP.

"I lost faith in the criminal justice system to be honest," she said.

A spokesman for GMP said the force was sorry the family did not feel they had received a good service from its officers.

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