Posted on 10/02/2007 6:31:13 PM PDT by BunnySlippers
“One less post-modern post-feminist female. What’s to mourn?”
I would suspect that her family, including her three young children, feel very differently. Whatever the reasons that led to her behavior and death, I’m sorry for her loved ones.
Wow, I hadn’t heard that part. She was REALLY lucky she didn’t get shot dead on the spot, given all the security focus on cell phones, and the things terrorists do with them.
i still dont understand.....she came off the ny flight and had to catch a tucson flight.... in between had lunch and got drunk?
,,,,
What is this about being pulled to the side and patted down, and she told them she had to catch the next flight.....i dont know phoenix airport, but most airports across the country, once come off one flight and connect to the next, you dont have to go through security again?????
this doesnt make much sense.
It had nothing to do with security. She was getting drunk and did not hear the call for her departing plane. It was preparing for take-off.
She became irate and began yelling at people. She called her husband who called the airline begging them to let a mentally imbalanced, drunk, hysterical woman on the plane. They said no.
So she threw her phone at some people around her.
The police say they are going to release the video of the arrest which will disprove some of the allegations the family is making.
So they say, we shall see if they release the video of the officer taking her down. She was killed in their custody so they are the prime suspects in her death. Hopefully they have an outside team with integrity investigating as we wait for news releases.
Yeah, the report I read today said that she strangled herself with the shackle chain.
What Mr. Gotbaum did not know was that his wife was dead, found on the floor of a police holding room in the airport with a shackle stretched across her neck, according to the police.
“I’m actually quite unhappy that I have not heard back, because the police don’t really understand what they’re dealing with right now and no one has called me, but he does,”
What a shame that Mr. Gotham allowed his wife to fly on a couple of flights knowing she was hysterical, out of control, suicidal and "they don't know what they're dealing with" ... let her fly unattended to her $42,000 a month facility UNESCORTED.
He had no concern for her fellow passengers on those two flights as this could well have happened while the plane was in the air. She should have hired someone to accompany her!
The result of all this was the perfect storm which allowed Mrs. Gotbaum to go get tanked at an airport bar, miss her connecting flight, go psycho on the cops, and end up in a holding cell where she apparently managed to choke herself to death.
By the way, she had called her husband (or at least attempted to call him and left messages) several times while at the airport after missing her flight. I am sure he got quite an earful and naturally became alarmed. That's how he knew his wife was having problems with the cops. "....the police don’t really understand what they’re dealing with right now...."
In the end, it was Mrs. Gotbaum's own bad choices that led to her demise.
Sadly, the Gotbaum family's high-priced dream team will probably convince the jury that the police did not exercise enough caution.
That stinks!
What I think is fascinating about this whole episode...there are a number of rehab clinics on the east coast and especially up in New York state...which are just as adequate. Having been to Tucson, and know the “legendary” clinic structure there...these Tucson facilities are geared for one of two things....either extreme privacy (where a Hollywood star can arrive and detox for four weeks) or extreme length (secure rehab places for a six-month visit). I’m guessing the family wanted her way out of the NY City region and in a very private location. Some doctor must have been treating her and given her some kind of “upper” to help her cope with the flights...which really took her into overdrive instead.
I gather she had flunked out of at least a couple of programs in the Northeast, but obviously not all of them, so I suspect you’re right that the family wanted to get her far away. Maybe better for the kids to have her far away for a long time, so a normal household routine could be re-established, instead of having mom popping back home repeatedly, either already drunk or relapsing very soon after returning from a treatment center.
If any doctors was prescribing her “uppers” to get her through her unaccompanied trip, he’d better be getting his lawyers warmed up . . . Though I think it’s more likely she was just at the peak of drunkenness, and that’s what made her flip out.
The very idea of letting a woman known to be an alcoholic travelled unaccompanied is just crazy. Airplanes serve alcohol and major airport terminals are lined with bars. There was realistically zero chance of her arriving at her destination sober, even with some friends scheduled to meet her at the airport where she was to change planes. And even if they’d shown up, a drunk who is determined to get another drink (besides the one or two she already had on the plane) and knows there are bars a few yards away, will do whatever it takes to evade people who she knows are coming for the sole purpose of trying to keep her away from alcohol.
Other articles have indicated that he had been in other mental health facilities (as opposed to alcohlic reahb). Certainly, her problems were far more than just her being a drunk. She appears to have been severly mentally unstable that her own husband said the police “don’t knwo what they’re dealing with”.
The husband also said on one of the three recorded calls he made that she had not been given her medication yet that day.
Regardless if she was accompanied or not, she was in danger of getting out of control on the plane while in flight. People were accompanying her were merely family friends, not mental health professionals.
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