Posted on 10/05/2007 4:11:07 AM PDT by Erik Latranyi
NEW YORK (CBS) ― CBS 2 HD has obtained surveillance video showing three different angles of last week's arrest of Carol Anne Gotbaum at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix.
The video shows the daughter-in-law of New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum reacting after learning she had missed her flight. It also shows Phoenix police officers move in on her, take her to the ground and arrest her.
Different angles show officers taking Gotbaum to a holding cell, where she later died mysteriously.
On the morning of Sept. 29, Gotbaum left her Upper West Side home, brought her children to school and flew off to Arizona. Plagued by a history of drinking and depression, she headed for an alcohol rehabilitation program in Tucson.
She landed in Phoenix at approximately 1:15 p.m. Arizona time.
"I know when she landed in Phoenix, she was stone-cold sober," said Gotbaum family attorney Michael Manning. "She got off the plane, called her husband, confident, committed, excited."
With 90 minutes to go for her connecting flight, Gotbaum went to eat lunch at the airport.
"We don't know whether she was drinking at lunch. We're going to find that out," said Manning.
Then she arrived for her connecting flight to Tucson. But she was too late. According to one witness who preferred to be unnamed, she became hysterical.
"She got her cell phone, broke it on a couple of customers, hit hem, threw it on her," said the witness.
At 2:49 pm, Phoenix Police received got a radio call about a woman who was "loud and disturbing." Within minutes, officers were struggling to subdue her.
She was arrested at 2:53 p.m. One officer used a knee to her back.
"She was screaming 'You're hurting me!'" recalled another witness. "The handcuffs are too tight on me!'"
Some speculate that could have been Gotbaum's fatal moment.
"When a person is lying prone and someone is lying on the back of the person, the person can't breathe," said former NYPD Captain Edward Mamet.
That's known as compressional asphyxia. Her attorney says the police could have killed Gotbaum right then and there.
"The witnesses that saw her just before she went into the holding tank say she was completely listless and unconscious," said Manning.
But according to police: "No one got hurt. The officers picked Ms. Gotbaum up on her feet and two officers then began to escort her to a holding area."
Police say Gotbaum then refused to allow them to search her. They chained her, handcuffed, to a bench. And then they left her alone.
According to police: "Officers felt due to their experience and the actions that had taken place Ms. Gotbaum was not a threat to others or to herself."
But they were wrong. At 3:29 p.m., Gotbaum was discovered dead. Police say she strangled herself with her chain. Her lawyer isn't so sure.
"It's pretty clear that somehow, some way, somebody used that chain around her neck," said Manning.
Police say they didn't know anything about her history of drinking or mental illness, and that they handled the case by the book.
“Is it your assertion that if a drunk kills themselves or someone else, the seller of the alcohol is liable?”
I believe bars/bartenders have been held liable when they continued to serve obviously drunk customers who went on to kill innocent drivers or do other bad things.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if that’s what happened? She gets to the airport sober, gets drunk in an airport bar with nowhere to go to sleep it off, then gets arrested for d&d and dies alone and unobservers in the airport’s “jail.”
I don’t really think bars should have to monitor their clientele that closely, and I think most of what happened to this woman was her own doing. But damn, they left an unstable person alone in a room with just enough resources to hurt herself.
If this had been someone’s dog hung with its own leash people would be up in arms.
“At any point does this woman not have any responsibility for her actions?”
She has responsibility for most of her actions up to the point where she was taken into “custody.” Custody means that some other authority takes responsibility for your welfare.
“Regardless, she is solely responsible for what happened. Nobody else.”
If she’d been killed in the struggle with the cops, that’d be one thing. But they had her subdued and handcuffed. They put her in a room and left her unobserved long enough for her to kill herself with the tools they “supplied” her with - handcuffs and two feet of chain.
Whatever else she might have done as a result of her condition, she was in the custody of some level of officialdom - airport, police, federal - when she died. It shouldn’t have ended this way.
“No it doesn’t.”
Yes, it does. They’re not allowed to let you just die in jail. They have to feed and clothe you and see that you get some level of medical care.
It was a “holding cell” at a major US airport, not an oobliet in a medievel castle.
(I got “oobliet” from the movie “Labyrinth,” not because I’m some dark ages torture geek.)
1. Media types report stories about people with whom they identify. For example, go to Fox News, and every time an attractive, young blond woman is kidnapped you will get the ubiquitous Fox News Alert. Poor black, white, Hispanic women are kidnapped all the time, but such crimes never make the TV news because the reporterettes don't identify with them.
2. Look at the last name of the woman who died in Phoenix. Then look at the last name of the people who control the media in NYC (and by extension the rest of the country). It goes back to point 1 above; she was a person whom the media types identify with as one of them.
QED
No it shouldnt have ended this way...
and probably wouldnt have if her family, who was well aware of her mental instability, had taken the responsibility of her to begin with. Instead they sent her off across the country alone. Makes me kinda go hmmmmmmm.
First, you are insane if you think law enforcement has to watch everyone in a holding cell. That is not possible unless you want to pay twice as much in taxes to have paid "watchers" stand around.
Second, this woman was not suicidal....at least to the police. If they had stopped her from killing herself, then they need to put her on suicide watch. That is not the case here.
Lastly, she may have calmed down a bit when they put her in the holding area, then became hysterical again while thinking about her predicament.
You cannot hold law enforcement responsible for what happened. They have no obligation to watch a non-suicidal person.
“Makes me kinda go hmmmmmmm.”
Yeah, there’s probably all kinds of weird family dynamics in this one.
For those of you questioning why it took so much force to subdue a small woman, watch this video of a police officer trying to handcuff a 15 year-old tiny girl.
If you can watch this and say police use too much force, you should have your citizenship revoked.
http://www.breitbart.tv/html/6414.html
I don’t question the force used. I question leaving a disturbed woman alone in a room. I wonder what the rules were for transporting and holding that 15-year-old girl?
How do you know she is disturbed?
and just about to turn his life around!
“How do you know she is disturbed?”
Anyone who has to be restrained is disturbed. This includes violently drunk.
There was a gas station in Carlsbad, CA a few years back that got hit for selling gas to a customer that drove off (drunk) and killed some folks. That's plain crazy.
two pathologists were on FOX this morning...both said that there was NO way she could have stangled herself, and more likely there was pressure put on her back or her chest that caused aphysxia......she was the mother of three children for crying out loud......
I've said this on another thread....some cops get their rocks off by restraining females, especially younger ones, and especially if they are good looking..
cuffs is not the question....the question is how a youngish woman is DEAD after being in police custody.....how often does that happen in your ER?.....I'll bet nobody is left with restraints alone in a room, and if you do, you are violating commonly accepted safeguards when it comes to restraints...
there are supposedly witnesses that say she was limp when they put her in that room....
Utter nonsense. She refused to cooperate with the police instructions, clearly shown on the video. Witnesses said she had broken her cell phone striking others. She was completely out of control and needed to be restrained.
By the way there is no requirement to keep anyone in the ER in restraints under constant observation. If that were the case EVERY ER nurse in the country would do nothing else on a Saturday night. You restrain them, then check on them periodically, every 10 to 15 minutes.
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