The family of a blind man fatally shot by Orange County sheriff’s deputies in his Laguna Woods home sued the department and officers Wednesday for his wrongful death.

Deputies shot Paul Mono, a 65-year-old retired cartoonist and screenwriter, after responding to reports of him acting erratically and threatening to shoot a contractor working on his condominium in February 2018.

In declining to file criminal charges against the deputies, the Orange County district attorney’s office said Mono behaved in a belligerent manner that included gesturing toward deputies with his middle finger and pointing his bare behind at them through a window. When he grabbed a gun from a sofa, the deputies fired multiple times, fearing for their lives and that of Mono’s wife, prosecutors said.

But the federal lawsuit filed by the cartoonist’s widow and daughters said the five deputies who responded to the 911 call mishandled the situation and escalated it to the deadly incident. They said Mono was suffering a mental crisis because of the increasing loss of his vision.

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