Autopsy: Az. Airport Death Accidental

[Freddie Stubbs]

Source: Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — A woman who died in police custody during an airport layover was intoxicated and accidentally strangled herself, an autopsy released Friday concludes.

The Maricopa County Medical Examiner's Office said Carol Anne Gotbaum, 45, of New York, was acutely intoxicated on alcohol and prescription drugs when she died in a police holding room at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on Sept. 28.

Gotbaum had been arrested on a disorderly conduct charge after she was kept off a connecting flight that was to bring her to Tucson, where she was to enter an alcohol treatment center.

Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jtT6mK0J-jZRgOQhUl8y_McJ-GCwD8SQ9KVG0

[no_hypocrisy]

1. There is still liability on the airport and its employees.

There is a duty to not abandon an individual whose faculties are impaired by drug or alcohol in order to ensure his/her safety. Gotbaum never should have been left alone and unsupervised under the circumstances.

[SyntaxError]

10. Can't argue with that...

While she isn't blameless by a long shot. She should not have been left alone in such a condition. That was just carelessness on the authorities part.

[crim son]

2. She was on her way to an alcohol treatment facility?

God, the grotesque irony. Somebody should have been flying with her. HTF did they restrain her so that she suffocated?

[kay1864]

4. They left her alone in the holding room for 10 minutes

From two articles:

Police said officers took her to the holding room and shackled her to a chain on a bench, where she continued screaming. They checked on her minutes after she stopped screaming, and found her with the handcuffs and chain around her neck area.

Efforts to revive her failed.

It appears Gotbaum may have tried to get out of her handcuffs, which ended up around her neck.

[crim son]

5. Cuffs around the neck?

She must have really struggled. Thanks for the response!

[kay1864]

8. I think that was journalistic shorthand

Other accounts said it was actually the chain. From today's account:

police saying they found her handcuffed hands next to her neck.

I'm wondering if she fell off the bench onto the chain.

[kay1864]

3. It appears part of the blame can be placed on USAir

There's every reason to believe that Gotbaum would be alive today if she had been allowed to board her flight to Tucson and take her rightful seat.

Gotbaum wasn't late for boarding. She didn't forfeit her place by ignoring the airline's procedures. Her only mistake was showing up at the US Airways gate and believing that her paid-in-full, reserved-seat airline ticket meant that she would actually have a seat on the plane.

US Air has said that it gave away Gotbaum's seat on a connecting flight because she arrived at the gate with only 25 minutes -- instead of 30 -- to spare. But she had already checked in for that flight at John F. Kennedy airport in New York. You don't have to check in again in the connecting city, as I understand US Air's regulations. The rules as posted on the airline's Web site also state, "Reservations are subject to cancellation if you are not checked in and at the departure gate at least 15 minutes prior to departure." Gotbaum was still covered. She'd left 25 minutes to spare.

Still, she was denied her reserved seat on the 1:30 flight. Nor did they allow her to board the next flight at 2:58 -- which, of course, was also overbooked. Finally, Mesa's counter personnel refused to let willing passengers switch with the clearly distraught Gotbaum. When she began to weep and protest, they called the police, who handcuffed her arms behind her back and dragged her away to a holding cell. They left her chained alone to a bench, crying inconsolably. Not long after, she was found dead, the chain shackling her to the bench stretched across her throat.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101201887.html

Carol Gotbaum was a 45-year-old mother of three.

[crim son]

6. I blame you.

:P

[Freddie Stubbs]

7. Most people don't freak out when they are bumped from a flight

If she was so whacked out on drugs and booze this probably would not have happened.

[kay1864]

9. Maybe so, although I've seen many that have

Still, if USAir hadn't violated their own rules in denying her boarding, she might well be alive and in the treatment facility.

Apparently that branch of USAir (Mesa Air) has underpaid employees with a major attitude problem.

[SyntaxError]

11. Most people would have been extremely upset if that happened to them...

then again, most people are probably not going through what she was going through at the time... Whether or not US Air should hold any responsibility in her death is debatable(I personally don't like excusing actions of people because of things others dones, unless they directly instigated it and forced it to happen) However, their fuck ups did have a role in the events that followed.


I would like to make it clear that I place a good portion of the blame on her family who should have been with her, and also on the airport police who should have kept her under supervision... then again, hind-sight is 20/20...

[kay1864]

13. I agree 100% with your assessment

Well put.

[Ilsa]

18. I was told here on DU that her family couldn't travel with her, and they had

made arrangements for friends to come to the airport to intercept her and wait with her for her connecting flight. I was told they were a no-show.

Sounds to me like tragic bad luck, or that the people who should have been there should have told the husband "No" instead of agreeing to do it. Or maybe they were there but couldn't find her or ran into problems getting there.

Still, no one should have left her alone in custody.

[crim son]

19. I think that's true;

yet precisely because she was whacked on booze and drugs, perhaps she should have been monitored once restrained.
edited for typo

[high density]

16. Not this shit again...

We already had plenty of threads on this subject.

[Lance_Boyle]

12. So the lady gets a Darwin award instead of an honorary halo.

I'd be surprised to find that any metro police station has round-the-clock supervision of its drunk tank. She was treated just as anyone else in her condition (i.e., drunk and combative) would have been treated. Sad case, but not anyone's fault but her own. She was a grown-up who behaved like a spoiled toddler, and her tantrum was fatal. Oops.

[kay1864]

14. AFAIK most drunks aren't kept on restraining chains

They also take belt and shoelaces in jail. To prevent suicide, yes, but either way, you don't leave a drunk person in a situation where strangulation can happen. Handcuffed, yes, handcuffed and chained, no.

[Lance_Boyle]

15. 'Most drunks' != 'most COMBATIVE drunks'

Physical restraint is common for prisoners who are unable to exercise restraint on their own. There would be equally loud shrieking if Gotbombed had been left alone handcuffed and gotten up to beat her head bloody against the cell wall. This was her fault, and not anyone else's.

[soothsayer]

17. oh puhlease. who believes this garbage.