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I'm quite amazed at the radical difference between the little I've heard from the national news media on this and what I've heard locally. Makes me really wonder about the validity of ANY news (OK, I wondered long before this).
Granted, I don't watch the local news but I do get a local paper. I haven't particularly noticed the paper giving the local cops a pass before (although they don't get on the case of our slimy lacking-in-human-decency sheriff Joe Arpaio nearly as much as they should) but maybe they are on this one. So I'm prepared to take what I'm reading with a grain of salt ... but I'd like to share it here if for no other reason than to show how this story is undoubtedly heavily distorted on all sides.
According to the local paper, the police didn't know who Gotbaum was because she was SO hysterical that they couldn't even talk to her. Both reporters who have viewed the tapes and eyewitnesses have reported that she was completely and utterly out of control. I do not know who called the cops but even if it was the gate agent who denied her boarding, I doubt very highly they said "Mrs. Gotbaum is out of control." The cops probably just got a call that a passenger was out of control. The cops say they couldn't even read her her Miranda rights because she was so hysterical.
Gotbaum was supposed to fly directly to Tucson and her husband thought she'd be OK but she apparently decided to take a later flight so that she could take her kids to school or something like that and the later flight was not a direct flight. She apparently was drinking during the layover (or during the flight). The cops tried to calm her down three times - she was apparently running through the terminal screaming hysterically and at one point threw her palm pilot at someone. She wasn't dead with the cops found her collapsed and, in fact, threw up in an officer's mouth while he was trying to give her CPR.
Granted - this is what the local paper has reported and they certainly have a right wing bias (and, frankly, if Mrs. Gotbaum had been Hispanic, I'd believe even less of the local news).
From the perspective of the locals, the Gotbaum family started a smear campaign before any of the facts were even out.
I don't know how much of the local news I can believe. Personally, I think she probably died from a combination of factors which may have included alcohol consumption (the throwing up suggests that may have been a factor), hysteria, and mis-handling of the situation by the police. But things have gotten so out of control, we'll never know the truth.
I predict that the local coroner will conclude that she died from alcohol poisoning and the Gotbaum's independent coroner will conclude that she strangled to death. The Gotbaum's will sue and the Phoenix police will settle out of court and none of us will ever know what really happened. And what little trust I have in the media (including the alternative media which is where I get most of my news) will be completely gone.
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