Juan Antonio Obeso Soto was 30 years old when he was arrested on suspicion of public intoxication outside a Torrance bakery on October 8, 2021. Within hours, he was dead inside a city jail cell, found hanging from a telephone cord roughly an hour and a half after he hanged himself, according to his family's lawsuit. Five years later, the city agreed to an $8.5 million settlement with his mother, wife and two sons.
The settlement, reported by the Daily Breeze, was approved by the Torrance City Council, according to attorney Michael Carrillo of the Carrillo Law Firm, which represented Obeso Soto's mother, wife and two sons. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's records identified hanging as the cause of death. A motion-activated camera inside the cell showed Obeso Soto's death and what the lawsuit describes as a lack of supervision by jail staff.
According to the lawsuit, Obeso Soto told custody officers that people were after him and trying to kill him before he was left alone. The suit alleges he may have been under the influence and may have been suffering a mental health emergency at the time, and that he had prior mental health issues. City personnel did not place him in a safety cell and failed to properly supervise him, the lawsuit claims, leaving him alone with a telephone cord.
A Lawsuit Built on a Narrow Legal Exception
The original wrongful death and civil rights lawsuit, filed September 22, 2022, in Los Angeles County Superior Court under case number 22STCV31095, named family members Maria Soto, Maritza Castro, Jesus Obeso and Jose Obeso as plaintiffs, according to court records reviewed by Rulings.law. The complaint alleged negligence, wrongful death, Bane Act violations, substantive due process violations, and failure to provide immediate medical care under California Government Code Section 845.6. The suit named the City of Torrance as a defendant, and plaintiffs sought custodial officers' personnel and investigative records.
That statute matters because, under California law, public entities and their employees are generally immune from liability over prisoner medical care — unless an employee knows or has reason to know a prisoner needs immediate medical care and fails to take reasonable action to summon it, according to the statute as described by Justia Law. The lawsuit also alleged that the city lacked safety check plans, written suicide prevention plans, and plans for handling mentally ill inmates.
State Rules Require Checks Every 30 Minutes
California Code of Regulations Title 15, Section 1030 requires local detention facility administrators to maintain a written suicide prevention program developed with health authorities, including intake screening and mandatory staff training, per the California Board of State and Community Corrections. A separate provision, Title 15, Section 1055, dictates that safety cells may only be used for inmates showing behavior that causes property destruction or signals intent to harm themselves or others — and requires direct visual observation at least twice every 30 minutes, with no more than 15 minutes between checks, according to the regulation as cataloged by Law.Cornell.Edu.
California regulations include suicide-prevention requirements for local detention facilities. The city has not said whether any procedural changes were made inside its own jail facility following Obeso Soto's death.
City Declines to Answer Questions on Insurance, Discipline
The City of Torrance declined to comment through a spokesperson, and did not answer questions about insurance, funding, or whether any officers or custody staff faced discipline, the Daily Breeze reported. The Torrance Police Department deferred questions to the Torrance City Attorney's Office, which did not respond to a request for comment, per the same account.
The $8.5 million settlement is larger than a proposed $6.5 million settlement that attorneys expected to sign in May 1991, described at the time as the largest settlement in Torrance's history. The proposed settlement was to resolve a wrongful death suit tied to a 1984 off-duty police crash and alleged departmental cover-up, according to a Los Angeles Times report from that year. It also eclipses a comparable 2019 case in which Kern County paid $2 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit after jail intake staff failed to properly evaluate and monitor a delusional detainee who had expressed self-harm intentions before dying by suicide, as reported by Prison Legal News.
Settlement Lands Amid Broader State Scrutiny
The payout comes against a backdrop of mounting state scrutiny of the Torrance Police Department. In August 2025, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a court-enforceable agreement with the City of Torrance and the police department requiring systemic policy, training, and accountability reforms, following a state Department of Justice investigation into officer misconduct and discriminatory practices, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The department employs roughly 227 sworn officers and 128 civilian personnel to serve a city of about 147,000 people across 20.5 square miles, and it operates its own municipal holding facility, according to a profile from the law firm Greg Hill & Associates. It remains unclear whether the $8.5 million settlement will be covered by municipal risk-pooling insurance or the city's general fund, and whether internal disciplinary or procedural changes were made within the jail facility following Obeso Soto's death.
