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- Sacramento agreed Tuesday to pay $1.4 million to Nyota Koya’s daughter.
- Nyota Koya died after an officer dragged her from her car and handcuffed her.
- A lawmaker is strongly considering legislation next year on non-shooting deaths.
The city of Sacramento Tuesday agreed to pay $1.4 million to the daughter of a woman who died after an officer dragged her out of her car in her bathrobe and handcuffed her on the concrete as she lost consciousness.
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The settlement comes roughly two weeks after The Sacramento Bee published a story about the death, including a video of the incident and a photo of Officer Matthew Sterling kneeling and smiling over the woman, her hands still handcuffed behind her back.
The City Council approved the settlement Tuesday during a closed-door meeting, according to an email Supervising Deputy City Attorney Andrea Velasquez sent to Mark Merin, the daughter’s attorney, at 2:36 p.m. — 36 minutes after their closed-session meeting began.
“City Council approved settlement of this matter at $1.4M,” Velasquez wrote Merin. “Lee will send over a release for review and signature.”
City spokesperson Jennifer Singer Friday declined to comment on the settlement. She said it is not yet finalized. Merin said the amount will not change.
She wanted to call her daughter
On Nov. 17, 2024, a company that owns part of the Haggin Oaks Golf Course parking lot called police to report a woman who was trespassing. Nyota Koya, 66 of Roseville, had been sleeping in her car for several days there after her car broke down on I-80.
After Sterling arrived, Koya, who was unarmed, said her phone had died. She asked to use Sterling’s phone to call her daughter or a cab. He said no. He said he could take her to a homeless shelter or jail. After about an hour, he decided to take her to jail for misdemeanor trespassing. During the struggle to get her into the back of his patrol car, she became unconscious. She never regained consciousness and died about a week later.
As of Friday, Sterling, who graduated from the academy in 2022, is still a Sacramento police officer. Last year he earned $226,528, including $129,200 in overtime pay. But the city has not released the records detailing whether and how Sterling was disciplined.
A state law requires departments to release that information in cases in which the officer fatally shoots someone, but for deaths in custody without a shooting, the law is less clear, David Loy of the First Amendment Coalition has said.
Ed Obayashi, a police expert and Modoc County deputy, said although the coroner’s cause of death was cardiovascular, not a homicide, the city should release the records.
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“It was clearly initiated by physical contact,” Obayashi said after viewing the footage. “You can tell she went into physical distress immediately after being handcuffed … They should consider it under SB 1421. That’s the whole point of the spirit of the law. This just makes it look like they’re hiding something.”
Independent autopsies, secured during court cases, often find other causes of death than what the official county coroner determined, Obayashi pointed out. The Koya case did not get that far, as it settled before trial.
‘This case is concerning’
Koya’s death was similar to the death of Scott Saetern, 37, an unarmed man in a mental health crisis who died after becoming unconscious when Elk Grove police officers put him in a constraint device and spit mask and left him alone in the back seat of a vehicle for 10 minutes as he yelled for help. Elk Grove Police also declined to release the disciplinary documents in that case, citing the same reason.
California Assemblymember Nick Schultz, D-Burbank, said after reading that story he is “strongly considering” introducing legislation next year to clarify that the law, Senate Bill 1421 passed in 2018, should include non-shooting deaths.
After the Koya story, Schlutz, who chairs the Assembly Public Safety Committee, said: “This case is concerning. The requirements and limitations of SB 1421 remain an area of the law that we are looking at closely over the recess.”
Merin, who represented Koya’s daughter, Nathifa Wright of Roseville, is calling for not just Sterling’s disciplinary records, but for systemic changes to the department.
“Matthew Sterling’s behavior was outrageous, unsympathetic and a total deviation from the appropriate training for a police officer,” Merin said. “He should’ve recognized there were some serious needs that had to be addressed and there was no criminal conduct. That is a problem we have seen in the Sacramento Police Department across the board. Where front line officers, because they have no training in how to deal with people who are in distress, take them to jail … It indicates the department needs to be revamped, not just on the patrol level, but at the higher levels, so that these kinds of incidents don’t recur in the future.”
The city is self-insured, meaning settlement payments come out of the general fund.
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This story was originally published November 13, 2026 at 2:36 PM.