Martin Gugino, the activist who was badly injured when police officers shoved him to the ground during a protest in Buffalo in 2020, died last month in Tampa, Fla. He was 81.
His death was confirmed by one of his lawyers, Melissa D. Wischerath, who said he died on March 9 surrounded by loved ones. His cause of death was not immediately clear, Ms. Wischerath said.
Two police officers shoved Mr. Gugino to the ground during a Black Lives Matter protest outside the Buffalo City Hall on June 4, 2020. A widely viewed video of the interaction, taken by a local radio station, fueled outrage during a summer of unrest over police violence after the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky.
The video shows two officers, Robert McCabe and Aaron Torgalski, shoving Mr. Gugino, who stumbles backward and lands hard on the sidewalk. Blood immediately begins leaking from his right ear. Several officers can be seen walking past Mr. Gugino as he lies motionless on the ground.
The fury over the video intensified after the Buffalo Police Department initially claimed that Mr. Gugino “tripped & fell” during a “skirmish,” contradicting the video.
Mr. Gugino, who was 75 at the time, was hospitalized for about a month with a fractured skull, a brain injury and hearing loss, Ms. Wischerath previously told The New York Times.
Mr. McCabe and Mr. Torgalski were charged with felony assault after the video of the encounter spread on social media. A grand jury declined to indict the officers in 2021, despite the district attorney’s assertion that they had “crossed the line.”
An arbitrator ruled in 2022 that the officers’ use of force against Mr. Gugino was “absolutely legitimate” because he was “not an innocent bystander.”
President Trump weighed in on Mr. Gugino’s interaction with police days after it happened, as the activist remained in the hospital recovering from his serious head injury. Mr. Trump incorrectly called Mr. Gugino an “ANTIFA provocateur” in a post on X and speculated that Mr. Gugino might have instigated or faked the encounter with police.
Mr. Gugino filed a lawsuit in 2021 against the city and members of its police force, claiming that he had been “forcibly assaulted” at the protest and that other officers had watched him “lay unconscious on the sidewalk, blood pouring from his fractured skull.”
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, claims that Mr. Gugino’s constitutional rights were violated and that the city and the Police Department tried to conceal the assault. Before his death, Mr. Gugino asked for the lawsuit to continue, and his lawyers plan to proceed with the case, Ms. Wischerath said.
Mr. Gugino was born in Buffalo but spent most of his life working in Cleveland, where he specialized in creating computer databases, his friends and colleagues told The New York Times for a 2020 article. He returned to his hometown to care for his mother and lived alone in her home when she died. He is survived by two nieces, Ms. Wischerath said.
The Times previously described Mr. Gugino as a mild-mannered football fan and activist who had taken part in protests related to military drones, climate change, nuclear weapons and police brutality.
He found community in Buffalo as a member of several close-knit left-wing activist groups, including the Western New York Peace Center. One of his friends told The Times in 2020 that he was one of the most gentle people she knew. Others expressed admiration for Mr. Gugino’s vitality, curiosity and “thirst for justice.”
Hannah Ziegler is a general assignment reporter for The Times, covering topics such as crime, business, weather, pop culture and online trends.
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