Friday, October 5th 2007, 4:00 AM
Read original...She was handcuffed behind her back and dragged to a holding cell, where she was shackled to a cement bench while hysterically telling police she was "a depressed, pathetic housewife" and "not a terrorist."
She was dead less than 40 minutes later. The stark video caught Gotbaum, 45, racing in her stocking feet - her shoes left at the security gate - as she stumbled through Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport before her 2:53 p.m. arrest last Friday.
Distraught that she wasn't allowed to board a connecting flight to a 30-day alcohol rehab program in Tucson, the 105-pound Gotbaum was surrounded by three beefy Phoenix cops.
The officers wrestled the daughter-in-law of Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum to the ground. They pulled her back to her feet after she was cuffed.
As the drama was unfolding, Carol Anne Gotbaum's husband, Noah, was on the telephone from New York desperately urging airport security to stay calm - in vain.
"She is, uh, uh, alcohol abusive ... but she is also in [a] deep depression and ... the police have to understand that they're not dealing with ... some lout who's just drank too much on an airplane. That's not what's going on here," Noah Gotbaum said, according to a transcript. "This woman is suicidal. And they need to ... deal with very kid gloves. They don't know what they're dealing with."
Noah Gotbaum continued to call throughout the afternoon and evening, without being told his wife had died. Gotbaum's family was given copies of the video and police reports at the same time as the media, just hours after he claimed his wife's body from a Phoenix mortuary and brought it back to New York for a Sunday memorial service.
"The video is horrifying," said a family friend. "Let's hope her children never see it." The Phoenix police also released scores of pages of police reports documenting the Gotbaum case. US Airways gate agent Rikki Greiner, 31, told police she called cops at 2:49p.m. after Gotbaum got loud and obnoxious when told she was too late to board the flight.
Stiff-legged and shouting obscenities, Gotbaum refused to calm down, even after being cuffed, police reports stated.
She didn't want to be searched, and she struggled when officers shuffled her into the holding cell. There they used a 16-inch chain to bolt her handcuffs - still locked behind her back - to a cement bench, according to the police reports.
As cops secured her to the bench, Gotbaum told them she was "a depressed housewife ... I am not a terrorist," Officer Dan Fulton said in one report. Then they closed the cell door.
Sometime later, Officer Andrew Woyna came back to check on Gotbaum and found her "down on the floor with the handcuffs under her chin as she sat on the floor with her head on the bench."
Officers uncuffed her and began resuscitation, not stopping even when Gotbaum vomited in the mouth of one officer. They called for a defibrillator at 3:15p.m. She was declared dead at 3:29 p.m.
The Phoenix medical examiner, Ann Bucholtz, 5-foot-7 like Gotbaum and only 5 pounds heavier, went into the holding cell and reenacted Gotbaum's movements as part of her investigation.
Bucholtz has not issued a cause of death yet. Pathologists found a bruise on Gotbaum's neck from the chain and fingerprint bruises on her right arm from the cops who grabbed her. Police said Gotbaum had been drinking before she became agitated.
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