By Dan Belson
Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE — Lawyers for the family of Dontae Melton Jr., who died in June after Baltimore Police detained him while waiting close to an hour for an ambulance, said they plan to file a lawsuit after investigators conclude their probe of the in-custody death.
Attorney Larry Greenberg said at a Tuesday news conference that Melton’s family has authorized his firm to sue “those responsible” for Melton’s “needless death” on a hot June night, hours after the 31-year-old approached a police cruiser and asked for help.
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The family’s decision to take legal action comes after the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner deemed Melton’s death a homicide and after state investigators released hours of body camera footage of Melton’s encounter with police on June 24. The footage shows officers detaining Melton — who authorities and family members say was experiencing a mental health crisis — as they wait for medics.
The medics didn’t arrive, and police ultimately took Melton to a hospital, where he died hours later.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday outside Baltimore Circuit Court, Greenberg said that after police had restrained Melton, they “mocked him, abused him and left him to die.”
“We will take full legal action in the court standing behind us, because at some point, this behavior needs to end,” Greenberg said, surrounded by members of Melton’s family. He did not say who specifically would be named as a defendant.
A Baltimore Police spokesperson said Tuesday that the department wouldn’t comment on pending litigation. The police department hasn’t received a full autopsy report regarding Melton’s death, spokesperson Lindsey Eldridge said, also noting that the Maryland attorney general’s office is still investigating the matter.
The lawsuit, Greenberg said, would be filed after the attorney general’s office’s Independent Investigations Division, which probes fatal encounters with police, concludes its investigation of Melton’s death. He said the state medical examiner’s office was “honest” in ruling Melton’s death a homicide, but that there were still loose ends, such as the specific cause of his death.
He called on people who may have witnessed officers’ interactions with Melton in Southwest Baltimore to come forward, calling the details released thus far the “limited truth.” He said city officials have “tried to point fingers at each other” over Baltimore’s computer-aided dispatch system, an aging emergency communications network that broke down that night.
Authorities have not directly said why medics never responded to the scene, though officials have noted that the dispatch system, which helps public safety agencies coordinate on calls for service, failed that night. Officers are seen on body camera footage becoming increasingly frustrated over the outage and medics’ absence.
“It’s crazy because this puts the onus on us now,” one officer says in the footage. “We must have requested medics three or four times. … It’s just too long. It’s too long. We have a duty to do our best.”
“Let’s be clear, (the dispatch system’s failure is) no excuse,” Greenberg said, noting that Grace Medical Center, the hospital where Melton was eventually taken, is a three-minute drive from the intersection where police encountered the 31-year-old and waited for medics.
“We live in Baltimore City, we have some of the best medical treatment in the world,” he said. “Take him to any one of those hospitals, and it would have kept him alive. But they didn’t do it.”
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