The NYS Attorney General's Office is investigating after Syracuse Police said that a man died of a possible overdose shortly after they took him into custody early Wednesday morning.
Tenants at the apartment building where the man was living said that police failed to show up for over two hours as he was suffering from some kind of drug-related issue, and raised questions about why he died so suddenly once police got him into the back of an ambulance.
"As soon as they got him out here he was gone. He was dead," said Josh Benedict.
Benedict lives at the apartment building on Teall Avenue where this all occurred. He said he first met the 23-year-old man who would later die Wednesday morning about two weeks ago. He said that this man was living with him and his roommate sporadically, and was aware of a historical drug issue thanks to another tenant who said she'd known him for years.
They both said that he was trying to clean up his act after years of struggling with homelessness and addiction.
Late Tuesday night, Benedict said that he found the man in the bathroom of the apartment, staring off into space, evidently high on something. About fifteen minutes later, without warning, Benedict said that the man began to physically lash out at his surroundings and kicked the door closed.
Benedict said that he wanted to let him get this out of his system and left him for about an hour; then he realized that he wasn't letting up and was hurting himself. Benedict said that he opened the bathroom door to see blood on the floor.
That's when he said he first called 911, just after 2 a.m. No one arrived; so he called about half an hour later, and a third time an hour after that just before 4 a.m. Broadcastify logs show that dispatch sent first responders to the apartment building on Teall Ave shortly after that, with a dispatcher referencing the fact that there had been multiple calls.
"He just called back and stated he ripped the toilet off of the wall. Believes he's having some kind of psychotic break, 0400," said the dispatcher.
Tenants told CNY Central that the man had ripped the toilet and sink out of the wall and had punched the tile. Benedict said he had rolled around in blood and feces.
When police arrived, Benedict said that he watched the police go into the bathroom, and the door closed; he couldn't see what happened, but he said that the man instantly seemed to calm down.
"They were able to lift him up by his legs and arms, almost like he was knocked out," said Benedict, "he was going through all them hours, soon as the cops get in there, out like a light."
Benedict said that police carried him out to the front lawn, where he once again began to act up and tried spitting. Benedict said that police flipped him over, handcuffed him and put him in an ambulance.
Witnesses said that they watched the ambulance begin to pull away, only for it to stop abruptly and sit about 10 yards away at the corner of Teall and Hawley. Tenants claimed that in subsequent interviews with police later that day, a detective told them that the man had died in the ambulance and didn't make it alive to the hospital.
Benedict said that he couldn't believe how long it took for police to arrive, having to wait over two hours. He said that police told him the man was not considered a priority call; SPD has told CNY Central in the past that with staffing shortages, call urgency is triaged based on imminent danger to people involved.
According to Benedict, he was very clear about the possibility that this was a medical emergency given the likelihood of drugs being involved.
He was not one of the top priorities that night on the call list. You see where that got him.
Benedict and his fellow tenants told CNY Central that police have been "rude" since, making them feel like criminals themselves and taping off their own apartment units as they treat them as crime scenes.
CNY Central has reached out to Syracuse Police, but a spokesperson declined to provide details on how officers handled the situation, what kind of force was involved if any, and why it took so long from the first 911 call to actually arrive.
SPD has directed us to the Attorney General's Office, which is now conducting a preliminary investigation, according to a spokesperson for the AG. They said in a statement that it is now standard protocol for their team to get involved when an officer may have caused someone's death, "by an act or omission."
This is a developing story.