Friday, October 05, 2007

The death of Carol Gotbaum

This is a very sad case, but in my honest opinion, I do not think the Phoenix Police Department did anything wrong here.

Airport Death

This case has drawn national attention. But the attention is being drawn to the Phoenix Police Department and the Maricopa County Medical Examiner's office. An autopsy was performed. I have a gut feeling that when they get the toxicology results back we won't be too surprised.

This lady was travelling to Tucson from New York to enter an alcohol rehab facility. My question is, why in the hell was she allowed to travel alone? There is a lot of questions that need to be answered about this. There was supposed to be some family friends that were supposed to meet her in Phoenix during the layover. They apparently never showed up. The lady went somewhere (supposedly for lunch, my guess is it was a lunch of the liquid variety) and did not make it back in time for the boarding of her flight. You can read the article for yourself in the link above.

There is another reason I am somewhat interested in this story. Back in 1995 I was deep into my addictions and my wife had left me. I wanted to go back to a rehab facility that I had been in a year earlier in St. Louis Missouri. I was so intoxicated at the time and cannot believe they even allowed me on the plane. All I remember is waking up at the St. Louis Airport passed out on a bench somewhere. Somebody from the rehab facility was supposed to meet me there. Somehow I made it there in a Taxicab. But I could have been robbed, mugged, or God forbid locked up in a cell and killed myself. I have no idea what decisions were made to have me board the flight by myself, but it should not have been.

I am sorry for Carol's death and I pray for her family. But please do not put time and effort into a frivolous lawsuit with your high priced lawyers. If the Phoenix Police Department did something wrong, then by all means let them be punished. I am sure they are sad about this woman's death and apparently they did all they could to try and revive her. But some blame has to be placed on the family for allowing her to fly by herself.

2 Comments:

Blogger Dave said...

Keith, I tend to agree with you, having only caught a headline or two; but, one thing that struck me is that the police/sheriff left her in a cell and didn't monitor her. No cameras, saying they don't have them so as to protect the prisoner's privacy.

Being the lawyer that I am, I know that a prisoner has no privacy rights, and having heard your Sheriff often talking about the way he views his job, I don't think he really believes a prisoner deserves any privacy.

That said, I suppose I should go and actually read the stories.

Hope you, and all the kids are well.

1:09 PM  
Blogger Jeni said...

Dave may have some good points there in one respect but I do definitely have to agree with your theory about the entire situation. Like you, I am very sorry for her family with their loss but if she had issues with alcohol abuse, was heading to a rehab center, family and the rehab center are the ones who let her down -after she let herself down too, in a manner of speaking. The jail in a neighboring county had two young men in custody, both who were supposed to be on "suicide watch" and both, somehow managed to commit suicide under those conditions, within two weeks of each other no less. (one of these two young men was a friend of both my younger kids and the whole thing, besides devastating his family, really hit the young folks in this area quite hard.)

9:16 PM  

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