October 3, 2007
Gotbaum Autopsy Inconclusive, 2nd Autopsy Conducted
A Phoenix medical examiner's autopsy conducted on the body of New York resident Carol Anne Gotbaum was inconclusive. Gotbaum died in police custody at Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport on Friday, after she became upset when she missed a connection to Tucson, where she was planning on checking into the Cottonwood de Tucson alcohol rehabilitation center. Police suggested that she died while struggling to break free of her handcuffs; her family, which includes stepmother-in-law Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, believe she may have been manhandled and wonder why a disturbed woman weighing 105 pounds was handcuffed behind her back and left alone.
The Maricopa County Medical Examiner's office had delayed its autopsy at the request of the Gotbaum family, which wanted its own independent pathologist present. The family hired Dr. Cyril Wecht to observe the autopsy, but his flight did not arrive on time, so he will conduct a second autopsy. Wecht recently handled the private autopsy of Anna Nicole Smith's son Daniel. The battle over Gotbaum's body became heated, as the Gotbaum family's lawyer Michael Manning accused the medical examiner of not releasing the body immediately. The body was eventually released to Wecht, but Manning is questioning the Maricopa County Medical Examiner's "integrity." The Post reports that Wecht's results will be ready "in a week or so."
The Daily News mentions Gotbaum's "desperate last call". Witnesses say that she was overheard telling her husband, Noah in New York, "They are not letting me on! It's all falling apart!"
Noah Gotbaum called back, desperately trying to persuade the U.S. Airways Express agent to calm his wife and let the mother of three board the plane for the $42,000-a-month Cottonwood de Tucson rehab program, friends and witnesses said.Gotbaum, who reportedly attempted suicide twice before, was supposed to meet a friend during the connection in Phoenix, but the friend never showed up. Airlines workers tell the News that she "had lunch solo at the terminal, got drunk and didn't hear her connecting flight being called for Tucson.""It will be okay. She just needs to take her medication. ... She hasn't taken it today," an airline worker said Noah Gotbaum begged. His wife was taking prescriptions for anxiety and depression, sources said.
The airline agent called Phoenix police, who soon grappled with and cuffed the distraught 45-year-old, then shackled her to a bench in an airport holding area Friday.
The NY Times has an editorial about Gotbaum's death, remarking, "It is not clear what, if any, mistreatment occurred, but among the questions that need answers are the cause of her death, and why an obviously troubled woman was not placed under better supervision. Since Sept. 11, 2001, there have been widespread reports of airport security officials mistreating travelers and quickly escalating minor incidents further than they needed to go."
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$42,000-a-month?! Wow. Why even stop doing drugs? I couldn't spend $42,000 on drugs in one month no matter how hard it tried.
this is why I carry my little cheap mp3 player/recorder with me all the time.
that's right, I don't have a cell phone camera.
I do carry my digicam with me though.
This is a sad story, but I really don't see what all the insinuations are about. Does anyone besides her family believe there was wrongdoing here? I think the accounts, as they are given are actually quite plausible:
1) Mentally unstable woman got drunk and had an anxiety attack while trying to board a plane.
2) The airline makes the correct decision not to let her on.
3) B/c she was "flailing wildly", the police make the decision to handcuff her and detain her. They obviously couldn't let her run around the airport in that state.
4) A woman with suicidal tendencies ends up dead after being left along in a holding cell.
Um, if you ask me the police story is the most believable. But of course, if this was my wife, I'd want a thorough investigation too I guess.
And yes, $42,000 a MONTH!?!? I certainly hope that's a typo. Wow.
you never send anyone off to rehab alone for the check in, her family are a bunch of clowns looking to assuage their guilt and blame anyone they can.
if she was obviously distraught do you think maybe the officers had no idea whether or not she presented a danger - of course they handcuffed her behind her back. air travel sucks bad enough as it is, and security may be a joke but it is a real concern given that tsa has no idea what they may be looking for.
I'm curious what other options airport personnel/police have for detaining a woman who has clearly lost it. She was disorderly, possibly drunk, mentally ill and off her meds. Should they have given her a cookie?
Is anyone but me wondering why she was traveling alone to rehab? Isn't that just a recipe for disaster? Couldn't her husband have accompanied her? It's not fair to the airline to basically put an unstable woman in their care, and then blame them when she misses her flight.
The ballet of blame begins. Lets see if the family can create a payday out of this.
The family lets a suicidal, drug addled alcoholic fly cross country ALONE to a rehab, without her medication, and can't understand what could go wrong.
She had a drunken temper tantrum in an airport because SHE missed her plane and wanted it brought back. FU to everyone else, my needs are paramount. The everpresent motivation of any addicted individual, me, me me.
According to witnesses: she then threw her phone down breaking it and attempted to take off her clothes and while cops were trying to restrain was still fighting and screaming.
I feel sorry for the kids and the cops. The family is now looking for a payday. While I am sure the family was also sick and tired of her self-centered, destructive nonsense, now they will trot out her "loving family pictures" and talk about her "getting her life back on track".
For me the only manhandling was letting her go anywhere ALONE knowing she was suicidal.
getting drunk on the way to rehab? good start.
yeah, seriously, why was she alone?
The police should not have left her alone.
NO TEARS SHED FOR IDIOT SELFISH WOMAN
"TROUBLED" = I drink too much
"SICK MOM" = I get drunk and neglect my kids
"SEEKING TREATMENT" = this is getting old, ill take a vacation and start the cycle of abuse again
"Ms. Gotbaum’s tragic encounter with the Phoenix police is getting attention because she came from a prominent family." = poor black & latinos do not deserve the same respect and consideration given to rich white well-connected people
can anyone say straightjacket?
I am sure the police didn't know about her two previous suicide attempts but her family did.
the police lie like a rug.
don't believe the police. listen to what the witnesses said on last night's Anderson cooper.
AZ will soon stand for AZZ as in we're taking them in the.
You have to wonder if Sky Harbor/TSA has any kind of protocol for accompanying/observing people who are detained. Or do they just throw them in a room and leave them there?
Now the truth comes out. So very sad no one cared enough to go with her.
Why wasn't a family member or friend there to escort her to rehab? It's not the police who shouldn't have left her alone... it's her "caring family."
It's routine for police to isolate disturbed prisoners, because they pose a danger to others. What if she had tried to choke someone using her handcuffs?
As I stated in a previous blog I had a sneaky feeling it had to include her drinking and missing her flight. I guessed right.
Wow! $42 K a month. That's $1,400 a day! I sure hope their cocktail hour and half price drinks aren't limited to the speed rack brands.
And to think two weeks after they are let out they will back to their old ways.
^^^ of course that was your post - the one signed by "guest"...
Having suffered from both depression and anxiety, I know how this poor lady felt. She needed a doctor right away, as this disease without medication makes you act exactly as she did. Been there and done that. It is horrible that we don't recognize that when someone has a mental illness, it is like having a physical one. Would you have handcuffed a heart attack victim or diabetic to a post? Or would you have called a doctor? Shame on all of airport personal for not having the brains to do any thing right. There but for the grace of God, go you.
even considering she was alone - and shouldnt have been, and off her meds and shouldnt have been, and distraught for whatever reason...she shouldn't end up DEAD IN POLICE CUSTODY.
it does not matter she had attempted suicide before. she shouldn't have been left ALONE in a cell, and she shouldn't have ended up DEAD. PERIOD.
You guys who don't see wrongdoing don't seem to understand -- it's not that the police are likely to have intentionally hurt her, or even hurt her in struggling with her. It's that the police, in arresting her, have a responsibility for her welfare. If's she sick she shouldn't just be treated as a criminal but as a person who needs help. THat might mean observation, it might mean calling EMS. It doens't mean "she's acting up, treat her like a criminal and nothing more."
The police are supposed to help people. And when they deprive someone of their freedom, they have even more responsibility.
The family hired Dr. Cyril Wecht to observe the autopsy, but his flight did not arrive on time
He, presumably, did not run amok.
When will we hear from the friend who was supposed to meet her at the Tucson airport? What's HER excuse?
Sounds like a dead ringer for Borderline Personality disorder. Very sad for all involved.
When will we hear from the friend who was supposed to meet her at the Tucson airport? What's HER excuse?
Yeah, that's what I want to know. We've all been one one side or another of an "I flaked" story, but most of those can be atoned for by promising to help someone move.
#22 please register.
The police are supposed to help people. And when they deprive someone of their freedom, they have even more responsibility.
emphasis mine.
Reading comments on this story, and other articles referencing Carol Gotbaums death in police custody, I'm appalled at the collective ignorance of most of those who post.
I have been reading comments to blogs and news articles throughout the web, and the ignorance is not limited to your posters.
If this is the state of American citzenry, then the police state that most politicos dream about...is going to be met without any resistance.
My dad told me the communists could never suppress us, we would fight to the death. We value our freedom. That was before Nixon and the takeover of our country by the far right. Far Right...is and alway was and always will be conservative, authoritarian, non-democratic.
This woman was manhandled as observed from the bruises on her body. This was police brutality and when police are given absolute power as they have been post 9/11, this is standard in how they escalate law enforcement.
AA is free.
You know who's really feeling like shit now? The friend who was supposed to meet her at the airport and didn't show. That's the person who should be making apologies
AA is free
Maybe she didn't want God/Jesus rammed down her throat.
I don't understand why George Bush ignores his alcoholism. Betty Ford did a great public service by facing hers and educating the public on this disease. Some moralists still belive addiction is a moral choice, based on willpower, and not a disease that seems to be generational in DNA. Studies on adopted children show that it is organically based, and families have shown an inherited tendency toward addiction,
It's a sad story. The NY Times editorial gets in right. Who knows what happened. Any time anyone dies while in custody, there needs to be a full investigation.
George Bush has been alcohol free for years.
Once an alcoholic ALWAYS an alcoholic. Bush could help his fellow alchoholics or he could hide behind 'being saved' and ignore the disease.
If this wasn't a fancy UWS Jew this would never even be news. Who.cares.
It is true that her prominence makes this news. Since this has been going on to lower classes and minorities for years. Hopefully this will bring all incidents of police brutality and victims of homicide by police to the forefront. Prisonplanet.com has a video a day on the latest police brutality in the U.S.
i dunno, what's easier, a cup of coffee, a meeting in a basement and a sponsor with some God thrown in or 45,000 dollars, a plane flight and being killed.
not sure.
Lets see, unfit mother of 3 - alcoholic with 2 prior suicide attempts - finally gets her wish. The real shame is that she is bringing others down with her.
ENOUGH!!!!
Haven't you people got better things to do with your lives? (Unfortunately, I guess not.)
where is the video? this happened in an airport & i am supposed to believe that there was no surveilance video of this incident?? the police are hiding something & you know it. most of them suck. just look at this story from the gothamist contribute page. even the "don't tase me, bro" guy is still alive.
>>>>
pot calling the kettle black here? I guess you don't fly. Some of us who fly wonder what's next?
this is why I dance my lord of the dance riverdance jig whenever a cops dies or has karma handed to them.
if i could dance on their grave in my michael flatley best, i would.
please see my new show celtic tiger.
There's nothing more to see here. Move along, people.
#28, you hit the nail on the head. Too many Americans are now too delighted by abusive authority, recreational humiliation and brutality against the weak. We have become a very sick and childish people bent on going down a very hard road that leads to some very bad times.
I hope those who joke about the death of Carol Anne Gotbaum get a taste of of the treatment she got behind closed doors in an Arizona airport lock-up.
Sometimes you can't protect a person from herself. Look, the reports about her behavior only grow more outrageous -- she was yelling and stomping and running in the concourse even before authorities showed up, she smashed her phone disturbingly in front of passengers, even though the airline rebooked her she still went berserk and couldn't be calmed, she was ripping off her clothes during this fit, and when authorities did finally tackle her she still fought back kicking and resisting and screaming the whole time. Pure rage. Perhaps intoxication at a solo lunch without her friend there leading her to not hear she was missing the last call for boarding, as reporting. Perhaps not taking her meds that day as her husband reportedly said in his phone conversation to the agent. Her own family admitted in earlier statements that she was emotionally disturbed and they understood the need for police to intervene. Oh this is hardly the massive police brutality scenario that all initial reports first suggested when all anyone knew was that this was a wonderful mother who got just a little upset, nothing more, and wound up dead in a holding cell and there's something more than a horrifying about the way it's apparently okay that this is the way the spin is going to be the whole way out. Oh just let's let people berserk and get rid of all public safety officers because clearly they're in it to kill these people left and right, never is anyone but the state responsible.
Initial reports say and she accidentally chocked herself to death with her handcuffs. Not one report has blamed the police. The family suspects 'manhandling' ..define manhandling? Perhaps they suspect this because they don't buy the "she accidentally choked herself to death" story. Can't say as I blame them.
"All within the state, nothing outside of the state, nothing against the state."
#4
you never send anyone off to rehab alone for the check in, her family are a bunch of clowns looking to assuage their guilt and blame anyone they can
********
YES YOU DO, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU HAVE BEEN DEALING WITH 30 YEARS OF CHILDISH DRUNKEN BEHAVIOR!
*****
You people need to stop worrying about police states, police brutality, etc...
police state is if your delayed checking your Volvo SUV into your $650 a month UES parking spot because a $7 an hour attendant has to check for bombs with that silly mirror on wheels thing.
police brutality is if any cop doesnt treat you like the princess your brainwashed into thinking you are,
WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!
police brutality, police arrogance, police harrassment are an EVERYDAY occurance for minorities, the poor, the homeless...
nobody cares unless its a drunk bitch named carol anne gotbaum!
very difficult for any rational person to associate this with movement towards a police state. really. while there are questions about the information that was made available to the tsa (i.e., were they made aware of her medical condition through conversations with the agents, and if so, did they take the required steps to address the real issue?), leaping to the conclusion that this is the necessary result of a police state is simply silly. there are plenty of other egregious examples that one can cite.
Why doesn't the family also hold responsible the restaurant that served the emotionally disturbed suicidial alcoholic? Or how about the doctor who prescribed the meds but didn't personally see to it that this obviously emotionally disturbed woman took them that day?
She was arrested. Was she read her Miranda rights? Was she told she could have a lawyer?
It is a police state in every airport, get your head out of the sand.
Truth comes out indeed. Before it was this regular normal woman who yelled about missing her flight. Now we find out:
1) She was suicidal
2) She was off her meds
3) She was acting completely outrageously
4) Noone in her family cared enough to escort her to the facility
5) She was plastered while waiting for the plane
Rich people's lives aren't as rosy as they appear.
All of you blaming the victim..do you really think she choked herself to death?
It's murda, it's murda, it's murda
It's murda, it's murda, it's murda
It's murda, it's murda, it's murda
It's a bloody murda