Carol Gotbaum: private pathologist says airport police were negligent.

He agrees with autopsy report that death was accidental, but says that police roughed her up and didn't follow proper procedure.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/111207dntsw.27b8f16.html

Dr. Cyril Wecht, who conducted an independent examination of Carol Anne Gotbaum on behalf of her family, told The Associated Press he agrees that she was intoxicated on a mix of alcohol and prescription antidepressants. He said she died accidentally of asphyxiation while shackled in an airport holding room.

SNIP

"This is a person who cries out for medical care, attention, appraisal, evaluation, appropriate treatment," Wecht said. "Anyone with a modicum of training would know this."

"That insensitivity, that crude, rude, brutal, aggressive treatment are directly responsible for her death," he said.

SNIP

Manning . . . said local and national police standards call for officers to notify medical authorities when they're arresting someone who appears physically or mentally ill – not after the person is already in custody and unconscious.

"It doesn't appear that they did" notify medical authorities in time, Manning said. "If they don't do that, if they make that mistake, then they're not supposed to leave that person shackled up and unobserved."

SNIP

What do you expect the doctor that is paid for by the family to say?

waited too long to get it.

Failing that, they could have kept watch on her through the window on the door. They had no other occupants of the six other cells that evening, and several officers nearby. They could have prevented her death, but they didn't.

Her family are the ones who dropped the ball on this one. They should have never sent her alone on a cross country trip to an alcohol rehab.

I am in recovery and I know that if given half a chance I would have drank myself silly when I was on my way to rehab. I had my family with me and they escorted me to the front doors of the center.

I would have let her get on a plane alone to go to a rehab center. Alone, she also would have drunk herself stupid.

to exercise proper care of the person in their custody, who was obviously mentally and/or physically ill.

I'm sure the family will always regret that no one was with her. But that doesn't relieve the police of the responsibility they had, once she was in their custody, to supervise her properly.

If she had been able to board her connecting flight to Tucson, there would have been no melt down.

The airline and the cops are responsible for her death.

I don't know how many she had but it will come out - All it would take is one to get her on a roll!

on the connecting flight.

You may think you know all there is to know about drunks because of your daughter, but you are very much mistaken.

the hard way!!!

wouldn't recommend that family members force themselves on an alcoholic who insisted on traveling by herself.

I was one until 6 1/2 years ago.

I've been down that road with a family member. It really bothers me to see all the moralising here about this topic. Not enough recognition that this woman had a disease, and part of that disease kept her from accepting help from her family.

Wow.

What will she be guilt of next, other than being killed?

rehab. Jeez.

and it was their job to keep her safe.

But yeah, her history and present condition would qualify her as a drunk. She was drunk at the time, and she had had at least two other failed treatment attempts.

But again, this doesn't mitigate the police's responsibility to exercise due caution. It wasn't her "fault" that she was killed, or her family's "fault."

I believe the police will be found negligent in not getting her needed care, and in not supervising her properly.

prior to departure.
The plane is not going to wait for you if you are late.
It ain't a taxi.

in her system.

But if the police had gotten her the proper medical care from the beginning, or, failing that, at least watched her through the window, they would have seen her get into trouble with the shackles and they would have prevented her death.

You don't take a person who is an obvious mental case and, without getting any medical care, shackle them -- alone and unsupervised -- in a room.

flight, if she didn't arrive at the gate to board the plane on time?
Frankly, at least her meltdown did not happen in the air.

w/ten minutes to spare. They gave away her seat. A fellow passenger offered her his/her seat. The airline refused.

You should do a little more reading on the topic.

The first flight was at 1:13, according to the airline. Not at 1:30, as reported in the police report.

She really did arrive at the connecting flight too late.

And reportedly, she tried to use someone elses boarding pass to get on the next flight which she was on standby for.

I'll dig for the link tomorrow.

US Airways Responds
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/18/AR2007101801654.html?sub=AR

By Elise Eberwein
Thursday, October 18, 2007; 5:21 PM

There are substantial inaccuracies which are leading to unfortunate and misleading conclusions in A.L. Bardach's Oct. 14 article in Outlook, "Why Flying Now Can Kill." In the piece, Bardach attempts to link airline overbooking to the tragic death of Carol Anne Gotbaum, who died in police custody at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport Sept. 28.

Bardach's premise, and many of her facts, are simply incorrect.

For example, Bardach states incorrectly that Mrs. Gotbaum did not get on her connecting flight to Tucson, even though, Bardach says, Mrs. Gotbaum arrived at the gate 25 minutes before departure. Actually, Mrs. Gotbaum arrived at Sky Harbor Airport from New York at 12:18 p.m. and held a confirmed seat on a 1:13 p.m. connecting flight to Tucson. Her arrival gate was three gates away from the Tucson departure gate; however, she did not get to the Tucson gate until 1:05 p.m. for the 1:13 flight -- after the door had closed and the jetbridge pulled from the airplane. (The police report, widely publicized on the Internet, mistakenly says the flight was due to depart at 1:30 -- we've contacted Phoenix police to correct the report.)

why they refused to complete the paperwork to allow her to bump a willing volunteer from the next available flight.

on that next plane, considering her blood alcohol level?

And she didn't start to throw a fit until they refused to help another passenger give her his seat.

So I don't think they had a good reason to keep her off the plane at that point. Legally, they're probably fine. But if this is how they treat their customers, they're not going to be near the top of my airline list.

Especially after I read that they make a good chunk of their profit every year from planned over-booking.

without actually having to measure their blood alcohol level. By the way, on one hand you are arguing it should have been obvious to the police they couldn't leave that woman alone for a minute. On the other hand, you are arguing the woman should have been allowed on the plane. Which one is it? Who was going to be watching this woman 20,000 feet in the air?

her behavior had changed.

She was still calm UNTIL she was denied boarding on the second flight. Then she flipped out. The police dealt with her in the post-second-flight, flipped-out stage.

I don't hold the airline responsible for her death, assuming the facts are as the airline has stated them. I think the police were responsible for keeping her alive after she was in their physical custody, so they bear the responsibility.

flight. For the second, she was already checked in and she arrived at the boarding gate 25 minutes ahead of time. The airline's written policy (you can read it on the web) says that she needed to be available for boarding 15 minutes ahead of time. So she actually got there 10 minutes early.

They're trying to confuse people with the issue about check-in. It's not good P.R. for them to admit the truth -- she arrived in plenty of time according to their own regulations.

husband say he couldn't leave the children? I find that a very odd response. She should NOT have been traveling alone, period.

If she had been able to accomplish this, it would have been a major step in her recovery.

He wasn't particularly wealthy, by the way. They had just taken their kids out of private schools due to the cost.

after all.

as people around here seem to think. And you can't FORCE one to check-in to a treatment center without a court order.

But in this case, she was fully supported by her therapist in her determination to go on her own.

with one.

for not doing that very thing! Interesting.

I will tell you what I know -- and not because I ever had any DESIRE to know this, or to know an alcoholic at all -- family members can be as helpless as anyone else to control the behavior of someone who is intent on drinking. Family members don't come equipped with handcuffs or chains, or a magical ability to control the drunk relative by talking to them.

Unlike the police, they haven't had any special training in dealing with mentally ill people. So they do things like rely on the judgement of therapists -- and this one told the husband that the wife should travel on her own.

something the family is saying. But it makes perfect sense. You can't force an unwilling alcoholic into treatment. You can't make them go. Going on her own would have been considered a good sign of her taking responsibility for her own recovery, which is a necessity for any real recovery.

And also, it's all really beside the point. If she was determined to drink, a family member couldn't have stopped her. Believe me, if it were that easy, Al-Anon would cease to exist.

is what I meant. And if her therapist recommended someone as out of control as her to travel, I'd get a new therapist. This woman should never have been traveling alone.

and took her into custody.

From that point on, she was their responsibility, and they failed to follow proper procedure.

and escort her to Tucson to the clinic? He was aware of her fragile condition. Unless you have been through this yourself, you have no idea
of waht is like to live with an alcohoilc or a drug abuser. In ths case, my diaghter was both.

As mad as I would get with her, i never would have let her go alone on a plane to rehab. An excuse for one last fling and look what happened to the poor woman.

Carol Gottbaum had been to a couple of rehabs before and relapsed. She was scheduled for a direct flight earlier in the day where someone from the rehab would have met her as she exited the plane. Instead she blew off the direct flight so that she could drive her kids to school one more time. Her husband may not have been able to get off of work at such short notice even though he is high paid professional. At some point, families have to say "take responsibility for yourself and your actions".

In my experience, most new patients are expected to arrive non-detoxed or even inebriated.

I don't blame the family much, or the police as much (although they definitely need to watch people in their custody better).

I blame Carol Gottbaum. Yes alcoholism and drug addiction is a mental illness, but it does not force one to drink, act like as ass, and try to get out of handcuffs.

I have been with drunks before, and family members often are no more capable of controlling them than anyone else. She could still have ended up in the hands of the police.

At the time of her death, she was under the complete control -- and responsibility -- of the police. It was their job to supervise her and keep her from hurting herself, and they blew it.

allowed on the plane. Whose responsibility was she going to be at 20,000 feet in the air, and with her blood alcohol level?

they didn't allow her on the plane.

And she didn't begin to argue, according to all the reports, until after they refused to let her bump a willing volunteer on the next flight.

Yeah, sure, they could have refused her boarding based on her alcohol level, if they had known it. But they didn't. And apparently (so they say) she was late for boarding. Fine. But they had a chance to perform basic customer service by allowing her out on the next flight, and they refused. They're not legally responsible, as I said, but they didn't do themselves any favors with regard to public relations -- especially now that the word is out on their double-booking profits.

and he did

...she accidentally strangled herself. The family's pathologist lost a lot of credibility with me on that one.

Having said that I think video cameras or visual checks were reasonable and the police are partially responsible. The majority and direct responsibility, however, goes to Gottbaum herself.

nstead of putting her in shackles in a room by herself, she would still be alive.

If they had watched her through the window, they would have seen her get into trouble and she would still be alive.

Instead, they gave a sick woman the means (the chain) and the opportunity (the unobserved room) to accidentally kill herself, while trying to squirm out of the handcuffs.

Gotbaum had a disease called alcoholism. But she wasn't responsible for her own death because she was in the physical custody and the control of the airport police. Their job was, at a minimum, to keep from harming herself or anyone else, and they failed.

And I generally agree that the police should have watched more closely.

The direct cause was her accidental strangulation of self. The indirect causes of death are many including the lack of supervision of the police.

which she got tangled up in, causing her death.

Whether this was "direct" or not doesn't seem to matter much, since we agree that she should have been watched more closely.

It does matter in terms of liability. I'm not saying the police aren't liable for failing for watch her more closely (and may need to pay for their negligence and change their procedure), but I think it is irresponsible to say they were directly responsible for her death.

aren't you directly responsible for their death?

The police gave her the means to kill herself and left her alone with it. Sounds pretty direct to me. Unintentional, but direct.

But its a bad analogy. The foreseability of killing oneself while drunk with properly used handcuffs and is no where near the same as handing a drunk a gun. Not to mention one would be consistent with general procedure and the other not.

You do see the difference? I'll say it more plainly. They failed to stop her from accidentally strangling herself. We both agree, I think, that they should have taken more steps to prevent the accident from happening.

But it isn't clear that they followed "general procedure" since, according to the pathologist, they should have obtained medical care for her and/or kept her under watch.

We'll probably never know. I expect there will be a confidential, out-of-court settlement, because the insurance company will so advise.

n/t

agreed this was accidental. WTF gives you an idea you know more than people who actually did the autopsy?

due to negligence, she was in their care, and they were, at the very least, negligent.

Ridiculous.

She was, so they are responsible for her well being while she is in their custody. I don't see why that is ridiculous.

to be charged with manslaughter.
:eyes:

Anyone in "authority" can and do get away with pretty much anything, up to and including murder. Hell, in my area, the cops regularly go on the internet and issue death threats against certain individuals, and nothing happens. Don't tell me there isn't a double standard regarding situations like this.

And stuff like this will continue happening as warnings to all of us ---