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Gotbaum Had Front-Row View Of City Hall Shooting
Public Advocate Reviews Tape Of Incident With CBS 2
by Andrew Kirtzman
NEW YORK (CBS) ― It's a routine start to a City Council hearing. The Public Advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, is getting ready to preside. Councilman Simcha Felder has a chat with a deputy clerk, Vincent Bonavita.

Then, gunshots.

The date was July 23, 2003, the day Councilman James Davis was gunned down inside City Hall by political rival Othniel Askew.

On Friday, Gotbaum re-lived those moments with CBS 2.

"We heard the popping and the parliamentarian on my left said it must be some sort of an act," Gotbaum said. "And the popping kept going and I just remember thinking, 'oh my gosh, duck down.'"

As the video shows, the Council photographer, Dan Luhmann, springs into action as officer Richard Burt, off-camera, fires shots at the assailant. Most duck for cover. Councilman Felder crouches behind the clerk's table.

On the video, a voice is heard screaming out, "It's in the balcony!"

Bonavita tries desperately to warn people where the assassin's shots have come from. Few in this room know whether the shooter is dead, or still alive and dangerous. Even fewer realize that his victim is Councilman Davis.

"It was complete confusion," Gotbaum said. "They knew something happened in balancy, but nobody knew what happened."

Gotbaum was worried about a half-dozen interns from her office who were in the balcony near Davis.

"When I heard them yelling 'it's in the balcony, it's in the balcony,' I was concerned about the kids up there," she said. "You know, they're young kids."

Fortunately, none were hurt, but for Gotbaum the memories are still vivid three years later.

"Every time I go through the chambers of the City Council I remember it," she said. "You just remember it. You remember that feeling."
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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Gotbaum: Daughter-In-Law 'Manhandled' By Police
Public Advocate Questions Treatment Of Carol Gotbaum
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Andrew Kirtzman
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
Still grieving her daughter-in-law's untimely death, the public advocate has launched a blistering attack upon a police department thousands of miles away.

Betsy Gotbaum says she wants to know why Carol Anne Gotbaum died in a police holding cell at a Phoenix airport.

"Carol, who was only 5-foot-7 and 105 pounds, appears to have been manhandled by the Phoenix Police Department," Betsy Gotbaum said.
"She cried out for help at the airport, but her pleas appear to have been met by mistreatment."
At the same time the family revealed Gotbaum was headed to an alcohol rehabilitation center when the incident began Friday night.
On Monday, the Phoenix P.D. seemed to back-pedal from their initial report that Gotbaum strangled herself to death while struggling alone with her handcuffs.
"The Medical Examiner will have to be the one who rules on the cause of death," Phoenix Police Lt. Andy Hill said.
The incident began Friday night, when Gotbaum missed her flight from Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport to Tucson. Police say she started yelling and screaming, and had to be wrestled to the ground and handcuffed.
She died soon afterwards when police noticed that things had become strangely quiet in her cell.
"This has been a horrible tragedy for my family, for my stepson and my three grandchildren," Betsy Gotbaum said.
Security consultant Patrick Brosnan is a former NYPD detective. He's mystified by assertions that a handcuffed woman could strangle herself.
"I've actually never heard of a documented case where this set of facts caused someone to die," Brosnan said.
As Brosnan demonstrated, it would be impossible for someone to pull her arms over her head from behind. More likely, she could have run her handcuffs under her feet.
"I dont have great range of motion, but it's extremely difficult," Brosnan said.
Gotbaum lived on a quiet, Upper West Side street, which is lined with trees and expensive brownstones. She lived on the street with her three children.
One neighbor says Gotbaum's case frightens her.
"I think we can all look and say this can happen to me," Jonna Espey said. "This is amazing. This is really frightening."
Gotbaum's family has now hired an attorney to monitor both the autopsy and the inquiry into her untimely death.
The Phoenix Medical Examiner is expected to rule on a cause of death as early as Tuesday.
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Passenger Describes Gotbaum Incident In Phoenix
Woman: 'She Was Screaming, 'You're Hurting Me!''
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Andrew Kirtzman
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
CBS 2 HD has learned more about the wild confrontation between a Manhattan woman and police inside an Arizona airport. Other passengers are now describing what they saw minutes before Carol Anne Gotbaum was found dead inside a holding cell.

CBS 2 HD spoke to one woman who was there, but did not want to be identified.
"She got her cell phone, broke it on a couple of customers and she threw it on the floor, hit them," the woman said.
Gotbaum, the daughter-in-law of New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, was on her way to an alcohol rehabilitation clinic Friday when she missed her plane and started to scream. Police handcuffed her and put her in a holding room.
"She was screaming, 'You're hurting me! The handcuffs are too tight on me!'" the woman said.
The Phoenix medical examiner is attempting to learn whether she strangled herself with her handcuffs, as police say. Autopsy results have yet to be released, but critics of the police are already crying foul.
"One has to wonder whether there was not some over-reaction, some excessive force and entirely inappropriate response to the problem here," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks security was intensified at airports around the country. The question in this case is whether all that new security did more harm than good.

"They come there with weapons. They come there with an orientation towards force -- that's what police officers do," John Jay College Professor Eugene O'Donnell said. "And they should be reserved, absolutely reserved, for situations where they are needed and where there really is a genuine breach of the peace, not the kinds of scenes that are repeated all over the country every day in airports."
Phoenix police have insisted they were following procedure in the case. And reports of Gotbaum's alcoholism and even two suicide attempts suggest she's had an unstable past.
Until a cause of death is determined, the case will continue to remain a mystery.
Two autopsies were performed Tuesday, one by the local medical examiner and a second by an independent pathologist hired by a Gotbaum family attorney.
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Gotbaum Autopsy: Bruises Indicate Struggle
Results Inconclusive However, Toxicology Results Needed
PHOENIX (AP) ― A private investigator observing an autopsy of a woman who died after being detained at the Phoenix airport said bruises were scattered across her body, indicating there was a struggle, an attorney for the woman's family said.

The autopsy conducted Tuesday on Carol Anne Gotbaum was inconclusive, and toxicology results needed to determine a cause of death will not be available for a few weeks, a county medical examiner said.

Gotbaum's family accuses police of manhandling the New York woman when they arrested her Friday. They have hired the private investigator, an attorney to monitor the police investigation and a pathologist who performed a second autopsy Tuesday night.

Authorities have said Gotbaum, who was handcuffed and shackled to a bench, may have accidentally strangled herself Friday. David Boyer, the acting director of the Maricopa County Medical Examiner's Office, would not say whether the official autopsy supports or refutes that theory.

"The doctor in this case is waiting for all testing to be done before she would rule on the cause and manner" of death, Boyer said. He said it will be a few weeks before toxicology tests are completed on Gotbaum, who was arrested for disorderly conduct after she was kept off a flight at Sky Harbor International Airport.

Michael Manning, who was hired by the family to monitor the police investigation, said the private investigator who watched the official autopsy said numerous bruises were scattered across Gotbaum's body.

"The body shows signs of a struggle," Manning said. "There are ligature marks, and some of those ligature marks match the chain that they used to chain her to the bench."

Manning said renowned forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht, whom the family hired to conduct the second autopsy, was "going to prepare his report and get back with us in a week or so."

Gotbaum, 45, was on her way to an alcohol treatment program in Tucson when police stopped her. Authorities said she was late for a flight and became angry when a gate crew wouldn't let her on the plane.

Officers handcuffed Gotbaum behind her back, shackled her to a bench and left her alone in a detention room. Police said she was later found unconscious and not breathing with the chain from the shackle pulled against the front of her neck. It appeared that Gotbaum got tangled as she tried to manipulate the handcuffs from behind her to the front, police said.

Police spokesman Sgt. Andy Hill said officers followed established policy while detaining Gotbaum. Police also said their procedures for arresting someone at the airport haven't changed since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The Phoenix Police Department's Professional Standards Bureau is conducting an internal investigation, a standard procedure following an in-custody death.

Manning said Gotbaum started drinking heavily about three years ago, and her family noticed a serious problem with alcoholism about a year ago, Manning said. He said she left her three children with her husband, Noah, and headed to Tucson to get better.

"When she landed in Phoenix, she talked with her husband," Manning said. "She said, `I want to do this for us. I want to do this for our kids. I'm committed to this. I'm so happy....' Everything was going swimmingly well when she landed."

Manning said he's still interviewing witnesses and the family hasn't decided whether to sue Phoenix police.