Update to carol anne gotbaum death

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Latest Stories. More ». Sign Up Now No Thanks. Become a member and go ad-free! Support Our Journalism. Privacy Policy. This Week's Issue. Do Not Sell My Info. All rights reserved. But it is much more plausible than the official police explanation, which emits the signature bouquet of bovine residue.

Anybody who has had his or her hands cuffed behind the back as someone who has been arrested in two countries and threatened with arrest in a third, I have had that experience should understand that the feat of contortionism required for Mrs.

Gotbaum to die in the fashion the police described was impossible. Well, unless she managed somehow to duplicate the experiment that turned Reed Richards into Mr. And the story gets even less plausible from there, beginning with the inconsistency in police descriptions of the death scene: Was the chain that supposedly strangled Mrs. Cyril Wecht, the independent pathologist they had hired, could be on hand as an observer.

This is possibly nothing more than an attempt by a very aggressive lawyer to tune public opinion in advance of a lawsuit, perhaps as a means of extracting a very large settlement. But it may have the effect of pushing Phoenix authorities away from the entirely implausible story that she somehow strangled herself.

Baden points out, correctly, that in Mrs. There was no security risk here. The heroes in blue could have handled an admittedly frantic pound woman without forming a rugby scrum, grinding her face into the floor, and cuffing her hands behind her back. Steve Lemons of the Phoenix New Times , a left-leaning independent weekly, reports on the Phoenix PD press conference during which the surveillance video was shown.

This being the case, there was no excuse at all for her to be left alone in the detention cell for any period of time. If the Phoenix PD sticks with the story that Gotbaum somehow killed herself, the fact they were warned about her suicidal condition seals the case for official culpability of some kind. And it gets worse from there if the story changes, of course. The most revealing tidbit in his latest account is the description of county pathologist Dr. That comment was made with reference to an order the dispatcher had placed for Chinese food between anguished phone calls from Noah Gotbaum as his wife was dying in police custody.

The title of this update is taken from a transcribed comment made by Lt. A male passenger volunteered to give up his boarding pass but the ticket agent told him they could not do that because it would be a security breech [sic]. The woman started yelling she was not a terrorist and took off running up the concourse. Dealing with a situation of this sort requires patience, discretion, and individual initiative.

Just thinking about airplane travel these days makes me irate. If that means they're gonna handcuff my ass and throw me in a cell, I guess I'll be traveling Greyhound from now on. The thing about her choking herself sounds especially wack.

Even if you get you get your handcuffed hands from behind your back to your front, how do you get them up around your neck and choke yourself?

Not that I wanna cast any aspersions on Phoenix's finest, but they've got some friggin' explaining to do, even if it turns out that Gotbaum was psycho. I mean, we're getting into tourist season here, the time of year when people from places like New York fly into Sand Land for vacay.

If the authorities don't come up with some answers quick, those Gothamites will be picturing a death-trap when they hear the words "Sky Harbor. Join the New Times community and help support independent local journalism in Phoenix. Get the latest updates in news, food, music and culture, and receive special offers direct to your inbox.

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You can help by participating in our "I Support" program, allowing us to keep offering readers access to our incisive coverage of local news, food and culture with no paywalls. Stephen is a former staff writer and columnist at Phoenix New Times.